


The Briefs Equation

by goodnightandgowrite



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodyguard, Bodyguard Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Genius Bulma Briefs, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, POV Bulma, POV Vegeta (Dragon Ball), Slow Burn, Some Plot, Vegebul, Vegeta is Bad at Feelings (Dragon Ball)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:34:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29220321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnightandgowrite/pseuds/goodnightandgowrite
Summary: Dr. Bulma Briefs just wants to work in her lab and hang out with her robots. She's got a quest to prepare for, after all. But a weird, handsome, muscled-up dude is insisting she's in grave danger and needs to hire him to be her bodyguard. Bulma is doubtful, but he's cute, and it might be fun to study him. She's pretty sure he's not from around here.Here as in...Earth.A tale as old as time. An insanely rich and beautiful scientist falls in love with her alien prince bodyguard.Wasn't she supposed to be the smartest girl in the world? Because there was no way any of this was a good idea.
Relationships: Bulma Briefs/Vegeta
Comments: 72
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. (Wikipedia)

The Briefs equation proves that aliens are already here. In the guest room. Moping about.

* * *

“ _Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” - Neil Gaiman (The Kindly Ones)_

* * *

“Fire. Again,” 18 said, and how she managed to sound like she was yawning Bulma wasn’t sure, because she didn’t program that particular function into the AI. “You should probably evacuate now.”

Bulma coughed into her elbow, eyes and lungs burning, and bumped along towards the lab doors. They opened with a quiet whoosh and all at once, she could breathe again. “Oh, you think? Thank you so much, Eighteen.” Bulma pressed her back against the hallway wall, focused on calming her heart. Smoke-related tears clung to her eyelashes and she wiped them away. The lab doors slid closed and locked in place. Seconds later the sprinklers activated, and she watched as weeks of hard work got drenched just beyond her reach.

Bulma knocked the back of her head against the wall, glared up at the fluorescent lighting until her smoke burned eyes teared up again. “Damn it.”

“17 is requesting you go to med-bay.”

Bulma huffed. “17 can suck it. I’ve got to review the lab footage and see what went wrong. I was so close!”

“Uh uh.”

Bulma glared at the long, skinny bulb. 18 was able to occupy any space of Capsule Corp she wanted, and typically liked to be everywhere at once, but whenever Bulma wanted to glare at her, she glared at the ceiling.

Like 18 was God or something.

Not that God lived in the ceiling of Capsule Corp either.

Bulma pushed her bangs off her face and left her cool palm on her clammy forehead. Maybe she should go to the med bay. “No,” she said, as much to herself as to her omnipresent AI companion. “I’ve got work to do. Tell 17 I’ll see him if I die tonight from smoke inhalation.”

“He’ll be thrilled.”

She pulled her smartphone out of her pocket and pulled up the footage, rewinding it to that morning. Ah, she’d been a bright-eyed beauty only eight hours ago, ready to conquer the world and finally — finally! — make a dent in her to-do list. All she’d done was set herself back. Bulma was so distracted by footage of herself soldering away and singing off-key to Taylor Swift that she walked nose first into a wall.

Bulma fell flat on her ass, a startled cry wrenching from her throat, and she covered her throbbing nose with her hand. Why was there a wall in the middle of her office? And why was it…so muscular?

“A man,” Bulma said, stupidly. She stared up at the man in question. He was an average height, though his jet black hair stood straight up in jagged points, almost in the shape of a flame burning in a fireplace. His back was to her, obviously, as that was she walked straight into. But he was looking at her over his shoulder, his dark eyebrows furrowed and his even darker eyes narrowed. He was kinda cute, in an albeit menacing way. And _jacked up_. Damn, his muscles had muscles. And yet he was still so lean? What was his secret? Steroids, she'd bet anything.

Bulma dropped her hand and wiggled her nose. Still attached.

“18?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a man in my office.”

“Yes.”

Bulma sniffed, touched her nostrils. She looked at her finger, frowned when she didn’t see any blood. It felt like it was bleeding. “Why is there a man in my office?” To the man in question, she lifted her face. “Is my nose bleeding?”

The man arched one of those dark eyebrows but did drop his gaze to her nose. “No.”

“I let him in,” 18 said.

Bulma touched her nostril again. Once more, she found no blood on her fingertips.

“I don’t understand. Do you have an appointment?” She pulled herself to standing. The man turned around to face her, squaring his shoulders and crossing his arms over his chest. He was only a bit taller than her, not counting the hair. Bulma opened up the calendar on her phone. “You definitely do not have an appointment.”

“I told you, I let him in,” 18 said.

“But why did you let him in? To my office.” Bulma glared at the ceiling again. “ _My office_ , 18.”

18 said, “I like the cut of his jib.”

Bulma pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. 18 had been watching historical romances again. She’d found a way around the restriction Bulma had set up. _Again_. With a sigh, Bulma walked to her desk “So, what’s the deal?”

“Deal?” The man asked, the intense furrow of his brow never ceasing.

“You know.” She waved a hand. “What do you want from me?”

The corners of his lips tugged in a deep frown. “I want nothing from you.”

“Oh, excellent.” Bulma plopped down in her seat, the sudden momentum rolling it backward. “You can leave then. Have a nice life!”

“No.”

Bulma scooted the chair to the desk with several small, graceless drags of her sneakered feet against the hardwood floor. “No? You don’t want to have a nice life? Fine, have a terrible one, then. See if I care.”

“Woman, you need to shut up and listen to me. Your life depends on it.”

Her mouth fell open. Bulma licked her lips and forced them into a smile. Sharp and razor-thin. “It’s Dr. Briefs, not woman.” She tapped open the timer app on her phone. “You have thirty seconds. Go.”

“Your life is in grave danger. It is imperative that you allow me to protect you. If you do not, you will be killed.”

Bulma glanced at the timer. 7.7 seconds. Impressive. Concise. Batshit insane, of course, but impressive nonetheless.

“By what though? What’s gonna kill me? I mean, I get the random DM from some weird dude about how he wants to eat my hair like fettuccini and dance around in my panties, but.” She shrugged. “That’s life in this day in age.”

The man stared at her without blinking. His eyes were so dark she couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. “You’re not safe.” There was something in his tone of voice that burrowed into her ears and dug its way inside her chest. Conviction, bordering on fear.

She coughed to chase the feeling away, but it didn’t work. “I designed the security here at Capsule Corp. I can guarantee you, I’m perfectly safe. Thank you so much for your concern though. You leave the same way you came in. Have a great day!”

He made a noise in the back of his throat that was almost like a growl. Except, it couldn’t have been a growl. Because what sort of grown man growls?

“You’re not listening.”

“And you’re not saying anything, so, here we are.” Bulma spread her arms wide, the back of her hand knocking into her container filled with pens. It went over the edge of the desk, but before she could even blink, the man caught it in midair.

He placed it back on her desk, and she gave him a nod of thanks.

“Look,” she said, “if 18 likes you, you’re probably not terrible. But you _are_ weird.”

His top lip curled in obvious disgust. “Weird? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Look at your clothes!”

He did as she bid. He was wearing an oversized, bright pink shirt buttoned up to his thick throat, and khaki shorts that were way too tight.

“It’s like you stole them off two very different people? And don’t get me started on your shoes!” Bulma shook her head. They were striped red and blue monstrosities. “Did you take them from a sleeping clown?”

Pink spots appeared high on his cheeks. He held his arms tighter against his chest and managed to glare even more intensely at her.

“I can’t take you seriously when you’re dressed like that. Have a nice life. Or don’t, I guess, whatever.” Bulma spun her chair around so she wouldn’t have to look at the cute weirdo anymore and pulled up the security footage from the lab again. She was only half-listening when the doors to her office opened and the man stormed out.

“I can’t believe you did that to me,” Bulma said. “Are you learning about pranks again?”

“No,” 18 replied. “He fit my profile.”

Bulma paused the security footage. “Profile?” She blinked up at the ceiling. “What profile?”

“Your perfect friend.”

“You have a profile for my perfect friend?”

“Of course. I have profiles for everything.”

Bulma scratched her forehead. “That weirdo fit your profile for my perfect friend?”

“Yep.” 18 popped the p when she spoke. “He fit your perfect friend profile perfectly.”

“You know I hate the alliteration, 18.” Bulma resumed the security footage. Past Bulma was swaying side to side in time to The Lucky One, bent over the motherboard for the scanner that wouldn’t scan. So far, so good. No fires. No danger. What was he thinking, telling her she was in danger without his protection? From what? He’d never said. He’d never said anything worthwhile. He’d just stood there all surly and glared at her in his weird clothes and ugly shoes and his muscled up shoulders.

God, she was such a sucker for men’s shoulders. Yamacha had good shoulders. Not as good as the new guy’s shoulders though.

She paused the security footage. “Okay. I’ll bite. How did he fit my perfect friend profile?”

“He’s stubborn and thick-skinned. He won’t back down from a fight and he won’t get heartbroken when you inevitably yell at him.”

“Yell at him?” Bulma huffed. “I don’t yell at anyone, 18! I’m a delicate flower of a person!”

18 continued, “He’s physically strong, which can balance out your mental strength. And, based on all the hours and hours of human media I’ve consumed, I expect he is on a redemptive path that will reveal a kind heart hidden underneath an arrogant exterior.”

Bulma scoffed.

“He’s also the first human to come to Capsule Corp in weeks and you need friends.”

“I have fr-”

“Human friends.”

She sat back in her chair, rolling it into the desk. Human friends? She didn’t need human friends. What she needed was to get the scanner working. Once the scanner was working, it was only a matter of lacing up her anti-gravity boots and taking to the skies.

She needed to get the anti-gravity boots working, too.

Bulma sighed. There was a small ache behind her eyes beginning to form. Tired? Thirsty? Smoke inhalation? Whatever the problem, it was one hundred percent not about the muscled up weirdo with the big hair. “Go ahead and tell 17-”

The lights in her office flashed red. Bulma froze, confused until the warning siren began to bellow. The office’s inner emergency doors slammed closed, magnetically sealing together.

“Um,” Bulma said, her heart skipping several beats, turning over like a car engine on low battery power. “What the fuck?”

“Pulling up the threat now,” 18 replied. The security footage playing on Bulma’s phone was now in real-time. The weirdo was tearing a path from the lobby back to her office, ripping apart her robots with his bare hands.

“Oh!” She gasped, as her favorite bot’s arms were pulled straight off its chassis, the security camera picking up the wicked glint in the weird man’s eyes.

Bulma dove for safety under her desk. She pushed her back against the solid legs and tucked herself into a ball. “It's okay,” she whispered, her phone trembling in her hands. “It’s not like he can open up the emergency doors. No human could!”

He was right outside her door now. Bulma watched, too stunned to even blink, as he easily pushed apart her regular doors. When he came upon the emergency, magnetically sealed, No Human Could Possibly Pry These Bad Boys Open doors, he shook out his wrists, looked up at the camera, and smirked.

The handsome weirdo wedged his fingertips in the seam between the two doors. He set his feet and pulled, veins bulging in his neck, forehead, and forearms.

Damn, he had some nice forearms.

The doors — the impossible to open doors — slid open with a booming crack.

“Oh, fuck me.”

“Woman!” The man thundered. Her phone showed him standing in the wreckage of her doors, robot parts at his feet, smoke billowing in around him. He crossed his arms over his chest, muscles bulging, eyebrows furrowed. His sinister smirk blossomed into an arrogant grin. “I believe you still owe me twenty seconds.”

She crawled out from under the desk, her arms and legs shaking. Her breath quivered over her lips with every shallow exhale. Bulma grabbed on to the back of her chair to pull herself to standing, her feet swaying as she stood. She blinked at him, this impossible man, standing in her office after having done something equally as impossible.

She’d never been this excited.

“It’s Dr. Briefs,” she said, popping her hip and smiling wide. “And I owe you 22.3 seconds. But you can have all the time you want, Handsome."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm new to the fandom. Apologies for the mess!


	2. Chapter 2

“Tell me everything.” Bulma was breathless. She put her hand on her chest, her heart fluttering under her palm. Her smile was so wide it hurt her cheeks. “Please,” she said. “Everything. I want to know _everything_.”

The weirdo’s grin faded. “I told you-”

“Yes.” Bulma stepped out from around the desk. She wasn’t trembling anymore. She strode towards him with purpose and confidence, so full of joy it felt like white-hot light was escaping from her insides. “I’m in grave danger and you’re here to save me. And you can save me because you’re not human.”

A brief flash of surprise crossed his handsome features before he schooled his expression into his — apparently default — scowl. “What are you talking about?”

“Modulated?” Bulma walked around him in a quick circle, gaze running up and down his body and back again. He had a nice ass. Maybe those too-tight pants weren’t so bad, after all. She shook her head. “I can think of half a dozen companies that might’ve outpaced Capsule Corp in mods, but none of them would’ve thought to change human hair like that. So, Occam’s razor, you know?” Bulma stood in front of him, close enough to feel his breath when he huffed out his nose, nostrils flaring wide. “You’re an alien.” She giggled in delight. “You’re an alien!”

“From my perspective,” he said, upper lip curling over his teeth, “ _you’re_ the alien.”

Bulma clapped her hands. “Saucy alien! I like that! I like you.” She poked his bicep. He stared down at his arm until she removed her finger, and then kept staring at the spot she touched like she left behind visible cooties. “Oh, that’s even harder than I thought. Wow. Okay.” She cleared her throat and took a deep breath, centering herself. “Tell me everything. Absolutely everything. No! Better yet!” Bulma grabbed his wrist and pulled. “Show me!”

The man easily took his wrist out of her grip. “Don’t do that,” he said, that growling noise emanating from the back of his throat.

“You’re not a touchy alien, okay, I get that. Hey, I’m all about consent. That works for me. Will you come with me, though?” She nodded her head at the broken door.

He crossed his arms again. “To where?”

“To med-bay. 18!” Bulma yelled to the ceiling. “Tell 17 we’re coming!”

She hurried out of her office. Her toes caught on one of her destroyed robots, throwing her off balance. She spun her arms in windmills at her sides to catch herself, but the ground was approaching her face with remarkable speed.

Not as fast as her new alien friend, however.

He caught her around the middle with one arm, hauling her back to her feet. Bulma blushed. She wrapped her fingers around his forearm while she found her balance. His very nice forearm. Up close, she could see the veins that ran along it, the muscles that rippled under the tan skin, the dark hair that was somehow both coarse and soft under her fingers.

“Thanks,” she said.

He made sure she was stable before he let go, wrist bone grazing her belly button.

“I’m not usually so clumsy. Just excited, I guess. I’ve never met an alien before! But I’ve always believed. Always. Take that Fermi! You know? The pessimistic bastard.”

He blinked at her, eyebrows furrowed so deeply he had three lines between them. “Is Fermi the battle-droid I destroyed?”

“Battle droid?” It was Bulma’s turn to blink. She pointed at the destroyed robot. “That’s my gardener. He grows flowers on the property and then refreshes the vases in the living spaces. My mom used to be in charge of all that, but she and Dad are off _galavanting_. I don’t have any battle droids.”

The tips of his ears turned a dusty shade of pink, but he scowled at the poor flower robot and pushed it out of her way with his foot. His shoes were horrendous. If he was going to be working for her, he’d need an entirely new wardrobe.

“Alright, well, let’s get to the med-bay, shall we?” Bulma clasped her hands tight to her chest, desperate to touch him again. A real live alien! But he didn’t like that, so she’d control her base urges. “Hey, what’s your name, anyway?”

He frowned at her, but replied, “Vegeta.”

She smiled. “Nice to meet you, Vegeta!”

#

The med-bay was only a floor above the lab, one elevator ride away in case of emergencies. The elevator in question, however, was outside the lab door, which meant bringing the stranger further into her realm. Her domain. It was always a little bit like walking someone directly into her heart, her brain.

Here I am! This is all of me! It’s kind of a mess but it's pretty, too, right? Be careful. It’s all very fragile stuff.

The man — the alien — Vegeta pointed at one of the frames her mother had hung up leading to the lab. The stuff casual visitors weren’t supposed to see because they made Bulma want to _die_.

“That’s you?”

It was a mock-up poster from the movie about her life that never got made. Bulma as a little girl, standing in an oversized lab coat, red ribbon in her hand and a bright pink, curly-wurly font that said “Smartest Girl In The World!”

She grimaced. “Yeah. That hasn’t aged well. Smartest girl in the world is cute when you’re seven, but less cute when you’re twenty-seven.” The elevator doors opened on their own and she stepped inside, beckoned him to follow with a jerk of her chin. “How old are you, Vegeta? Oh, does your species have a system to measure age? I’m assuming your planet orbits a sun, because, duh. Unless it’s very cold? But you seem to be doing fine with our temperature. And our air too! And how are you speaking my language? That’s like, that’s weird, right? What are the odds of that?”

The elevator stopped, let them out in front of med-bay. 17 opened the doors, but Bulma held up a finger. “Stay right there for a second, okay?”

He glared at her, but crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t move. So much arm crossing! Was that an alien thing?

“18?”

“Yes.”

“He needs a full wardrobe. Duplicates and triplicates of everything.”

“Yes.”

A red light ran from the top of his very tall hair to his feet spaced shoulder-width apart on the floor.

He moved his arms and watched as the light descended his absolutely jacked body. Damn. She’d have to ask him for exercise tips.

“What did you do?”

“Oh, that? That’s 18. She’s my assistant. She measured you and is gonna order you some new clothes and have them delivered to your room. Because you can not wear any of this ever again.” She put a fist on her hip. “Where did you even get it?”

He walked into the med-bay without so much as a glance backwards. “I do not have currency for this planet. My armor was badly damaged when my pod crash-landed. I improvised.”

Bulma’s knees gave out. She grabbed onto the wall to steady herself. “You have armor from space?! _And a spaceship_?!”

“No.” He surveyed the med-bay with a critical eye, his eyebrows never ceasing their intense furrow. “I had a pod that was ejected from a heavy frigate. I do not have a space ship myself.”

“Can I see it?” Bulma grinned at him. “Can I see them both, please? Oh, _please_ can I see them, Vegeta?”

He looked at her the way he’d looked at his arm when she’d touched it, like she was covered in visible cooties. “The pod was destroyed, so you cannot see it. I suppose you could see my armor, though it is no longer usable. What would be the point?”

“Are you kidding? The point of studying material from space? I could see how it differs from what we have here on Earth. I could see if I could synthesize it! And if I could synthesize it, I could run a design through the 3d printer, and then we’d be cooking with gas.”

Vegeta stared at her. “What?”

“I’ll make you a new one.” She snapped her fingers. “Lickety-split.”

“Why would you do that? Why would you make me a new one?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “You’re my bodyguard, right? It’d be so cool to have an alien bodyguard protecting me while wearing his alien armor. Speaking of! Please, have a seat.” Bulma directed him to one of the three fully-equipped medical chairs. 17, unlike his sister, was restricted to med-bay. Not because Bulma didn’t trust him or he wasn’t as capable as 18, but because she wanted him to be able to focus solely on human medicine.

That fact that he’d picked up an appreciation for veterinarian medicine was out of her control. She didn’t restrict it though, because at least it was less annoying than 18’s constant Bridgerton re-watching.

“17 is gonna run a full work-up on you, and all you have to do is sit in this comfy chair, and tell me all about the threat on my life that you are here to save me from.”

Vegeta sat down in the seat, his back rigid straight and his hands in fists.

“Okay,” Bulma said. He was still being weird, but at least she had context now. “Put your arms on the armrests. There’s a cuff on the right one, there, but it won’t hurt you. Not that anything could!” She laughed as she Velcro-ed the cuff in place over his very nice right forearm. “And then this here,” she lowered the chair’s scan box until it hovered directly above his impressive hair, “is just gonna let 17 get a good look at you. It also won’t hurt at all.”

“Why are you doing all this?” Vegeta asked. “I can tell you anything you wish to know.”

Bulma watched the nearest monitor, the information 17 was collecting lighting up the screen. “I’m a scientist. This? Learning about an alien like this? Oh, it’s the stuff dreams are made of. I’m so happy you destroyed my poor flower robot!”

“I’m going to draw blood,” 17 said. He, like 18, had perfected a bored affectation that would be terrible if she was trying to market them. Customers wouldn’t want disdainful AI’s living in their homes, mooching off their electricity. “It might pinch a little, but it’s the only time you’ll feel me.”

“Do your worst, corporeal voice,” Vegeta said with a smirk. “I fear no man nor machine.”

17 said, “…ooookay,” and a small needle came out from the scan box, held by a robot arm. The needle bent in half when it touched Vegeta’s skin.

Bulma gasped. “Your skin broke the needle!” She rushed to his side, traced the pad of her index finger over the crook in his arm. It didn’t feel any different to her, and the same veins that ran down her arm were in his. “How cool!” She smiled at him, only to find he was glaring at her. She tucked her hands behind her back with an apologetic giggle. “17, do a swab for now. We'll figure out a blood draw later. Oh, and, um, 17? Would you ask 18 to get a waiver printed out, please?”

“If he’s an alien, why would he need a waiver?” 17 asked.

She flashed a look at the nearest lightbulb. “It’s not an _if_ , 17, and he needs a waiver because I said so! I’m running a business!”

“Whatever.”

Bulma took a deep breath, pushed her bangs off her face, and smiled down at her new employee. “Now. Where were we? Right. My life. Danger. All that jazz. Please.” She grabbed a seat next to him and crossed her legs. “I’m all ears.”

“It won’t make sense if I begin my explanation at the threat,” Vegeta said, except that 17 stuck the cotton swab in his mouth, so the word threat sound more like, “thr-mmfhmm!”

She nodded. “Makes sense. Okay, let’s begin at the beginning. Where are you from?”

His red tongue snaked between the seam of his lips while he glared around the room. “I’m from Planet Vegeta.”

Half of Bulma’s mouth twitched upward. “Your name is Vegeta and you from the planet Vegeta?”

“All rulers of Vegeta are named Vegeta,” Vegeta said.

She did NOT laugh. “I see. And you are the ruler of your planet then?”

“My father,” Vegeta said. “He was king. I was the prince. I _am_ a prince. But the planet itself…” He shook his head once. “The planet was destroyed three years ago by a comet. There are only a handful of Saiyans left.”

“Saiyans? Oh, that’s what you are, huh?” Bulma twisted her lips into a sympathetic frown. “I’m sorry about your home, Vegeta.”

“We only survived because we were off-planet fighting. And we are still fighting. That’s why I’m here. Us Saiyans are part of a resistance force against an evil emperor who decimates populations and then sells their planets for profit.”

“Is the emperor coming to destroy Earth?!”

“No,” Vegeta said. “No. He doesn’t deem Earth worthy of decimation. It would cost more to destroy it than he’d earn selling it. What he’s coming for is you.”

“Me? Why me?”

“He collects scientists. Inventors.” The scan box rotated around his head and Vegeta tracked its every movement with his too dark eyes. “He wants you in his collection.”

She pressed her finger into her chest. “Me? Briefs?”

“Yes.”

“Only me?”

“Yes.”

She titled her head, narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure? He wants Briefs from Earth? Not Wozniak? Gates? Not Musk?”

17 put the scan box away above the chair. Vegeta met her gaze. “You are the greatest scientist, not only on this planet but in the entire Milky Way Galaxy.”

Bulma was instantly turned on. She wrapped her hand around her throat and closed her eyes. “Just imaging drafting that particular email to Musk.” She dropped her hand into her lap, blinked her bleary eyes open. She needed a cigarette. “Alright. Thank you for that. That’s gonna get me through a lot of lonely nights.”

A drone casually flew into the med-bay and dropped a clipboard on Vegeta’s head.

“That’ll be the waiver!” Bulma chirped, ignoring the way he swore under his breath at the disrespect. “Read over it at your leisure, and sign it. It’s to protect you as well as me.”

“What am I waiving?” Vegeta asked.

“Oh, nothing much. Should I discover anything beneficial when studying you? Pharmacologically speaking, or technologically speaking, or what have you. We won’t sue each other in Earth’s courts. That’s all. You’ll be paid handsomely, of course. For your work here, in the chair. And out there, saving me from an evil emperor. How are you gonna save me from the evil emperor, by the way? Like, what’s the plan? And when you said I was the greatest scientist in the Milky Way, are there that many other scientists in the Milky Way? We’re still looking for habitable planets, you know. Speaking of Fermi. Remember? From before?”

Vegeta held up the clipboard like he was trying to stop her words with it. “Woman, will you shut up?”

Her right eyebrow twitched. “It’s Dr. Briefs,” she said through gritted teeth. “Or, Boss, I guess now.” She relaxed her shoulders, relaxed her jaw. She tossed her hair over her shoulders and winked. “Or Bulma, ‘cause your cute.”

Two pink spots appeared high on his cheeks.

“Fine,” he snapped. “Dr. Briefs. My two brothers in arms are on their way here with a ship that will get you off-planet safely. It will be here in a year. We can only hope it’s faster than Frieza’s men, but there is no guarantee. It was a hard burn for me to get here as fast as I did, but it was a sacrifice that had to be made. You are the last, best hope of my people.”

Bulma sat back in her chair, the spot behind her eyes throbbing again. She should have 17 look her over while she was here. “What do you mean? The best hope for your people?”

“You can help us get out from under the thumb of Frieza. _You_ can give us a fighting chance at freedom. You are brighter than any of the inventors in the Frieza Force. With you are on our side, we can fight back and we can win. We have a year to prepare. And I will do all I can to keep you safe until that day.”

She scratched her cheek, her nails digging into her jaw. “This is…this is a lot of information to take in, Vegeta. I’m gonna need…I’m gonna need some time to think about this.”

He inclined his head, the barest hint of a smile toying at his mouth. “At your leisure.”

“Hey, Bulma?” 17 butt in. “I’ve got something you’re going to want to see.”

An alert chimed on her phone and Bulma pulled it out of her pocket, opened up the file that 17 sent over. It took a second for her mind to realize what she was looking at, but when she did, she jumped to her feet and screamed.

“YOU HAVE A TAIL?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm drafting a few chapters ahead of what I'm posting, and I have to say, I am having a BLAST writing this. I hope you all like it too! Kudos, subs, bookmarks and comments are always appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

The shrill, Earth woman poked and prodded at him for hours, obsessed with his tail and his hair and touching him. Her fingers were freezing. What did touching him teach her, anyway? Unless the purpose was to piss him off, and then she’d achieved her goal quite spectacularly.

She hadn’t spoken to him in several wonderful, blessed minutes, her head bent low over some sort of computer, talking in hushed voices to an assistant Vegeta couldn’t see. She wore a dark yellow jumpsuit, the letters CC emblazoned over her heart, the words CAPSULE CORP stitched across her shoulder blades. Her teal hair shined in the light of the medical facility as she twirled it around one of her cold fingers, her stringy bangs falling into her blue eyes more often than not. Her bright white teeth chewed on her full bottom lip.

Humans were soft. She was curves all over, from her breasts to her hips to her ass to her mouth. She was thin, in decent shape for her kind, but lacking in any distinct muscular features. Vegeta doubted she would fare well in a fight, even against another weakling human.

“Maybe I could get blood from inside the mouth?” Bulma asked. “What was it like when you swabbed it? The tongue looked supple.”

“Why were you looking at my tongue?” Vegeta asked.

She jumped in surprise as if she’d forgotten he was there. Rude. He was the Prince of All Saiyans, and he’d told her her life was in danger. The least she could do was remember where he was. Hell, what was the life expectancies of these humans? To lower your guard in such a way around a more powerful opponent? Foolish.

“Oh, Vegeta!” She giggled, her fingers covering her pink lips. “That’s not important. What is important is that 18 has your room ready, and your new clothes will be there soon. Why don’t you get freshened up and then I’ll feed you dinner? Okay? And we can talk some more?”

“So much talking,” Vegeta groused. “We need to strategize.”

“Right. Okay, we’ll strategize over dinner. Whatever you want.” She put a hand on her hip and winked at him. “Maybe you’ll let me get a better look at the tongue of yours.”

His face went hot. Vegeta crossed his arms tight across his chest and grumbled, “Vulgar woman.”

“Once more, I must remind you, it’s Dr. Briefs or Boss. Or Bulma, ‘cause your cute.” She pointed at the doors. “18 will light the way to your room and she’ll get you set up. You need a shower. Not to be mean, but, you stink. I’ll call you when it’s time for dinner.”

She’d dismissed him. Him, the Prince of All Saiyans! The absolute nerve of this woman. And told him to shower? That he needed one?! Perhaps she should spend months in stasis on a hard burn in a small pod!

“Tch.” Vegeta turned around and left the room. It wasn’t worth the fight. Not if he meant to keep on her good side.

True to her word, lights along the floor lit the way to the elevator and — once the elevator stopped on a lower floor — down a long and seemingly endless hallway.

The female voice that was attached to nobody said, “Sorry about the walk. She was going through some sort of mental health kick when she changed bedrooms. Wanted to keep where she slept and where she worked far apart.”

“The walk is nothing,” Vegeta said. “This compound is much smaller than the castle I grew up in.”

“Sure,” 18 yawned.

How was yawning possible, when there was no throat or tongue? Vegeta huffed. Blasted woman, wanting to inspect his tongue. Who did she think she was? _Supple_ , she’d said. How could she possibly know that?

18 gave a sleepy sigh. “Anyway. I put your room next to hers since you’ll be guarding her.”

The lights stopped and so did Vegeta. There were doors to his right and his left, but only the right slid open. “This is you. She’s across from you.”

Vegeta looked her closed-door up and down. “I’d like to get a look at her room.”

“I’m sure you would,” 18 said. “But she’ll disconnect me if I let you in there without her.”

Vegeta smirked. “You let me into her office.”

“I take risks, but I’m not suicidal. Go inside and open your balcony doors. Your delivery is waiting for you.”

More women ordering him around. Vegeta strode into his new quarters, taken aback by the size. The massive bed made up in white in the center of the room, the chest of drawers along the wall across from it, the thick beige carpet that muffled the sound of his steps, the gauzy white curtains hanging in the back of the room. He assumed the curtains were blocking the balcony doors and made quick work of pulling them open. He had a private balcony, overlooking a large patch of land, the white light of the wrong sky’s stars shining down and illuminating three hovering drones, each carrying a large box.

The drones themselves seemed ill-equipped to do battle, and while there was no telling what exactly was in their boxes, he knew there were nothing and no one on this planet that posed a serious threat to him. Vegeta opened the glass doors. The drones flew in a single file to the bed, emitting a soft whirring sound. One by one they dropped their boxes on the mattress, and one by one they left.

“So?” 18 said. “Aren’t you going to open them?”

Vegeta looked around the ceiling. “You’re in my private quarters as well?”

“Yes. I have full access to every part of the building. That way, if you ever need me, all you have to do is say my name.”

“I do not want you in my room,” Vegeta said. “I do not want you spying on me. Leave now and do not return.”

“But, I haven’t even shown you the bathroom yet.”

“I can operate a bathroom! _Leave_!”

18 huffed. “Fine. If you need anything, go out in the hallway and jump around.”

Vegeta stood still for several long moments, straining his hearing as if his ears could pick up the sound of an AI leaving a room. “18?”

There was no response.

He exhaled through his nose but didn’t quite let his guard down. She could be lying. The shrill woman could have this entire compound wired, every individual inch reporting to her. There were no safe spaces here, of that he was sure.

Vegeta tore open the first box and peered inside. Footwear. Several different varieties. He inspected a pair of boots, going over each inch with a critical eye. He hadn’t seen shoes this well made in years. The other two boxes were stuffed with neatly folded clothes — shirts, pants, underwear, socks. Everything was soft, finely stitched. Clothing fit for someone of his status.

He ran a palm over his face, pressed it against his mouth.

Too much.

This Earth woman was too much.

Vegeta shook his head and flew out of the open balcony doors, into the night sky.

#

His pod was where he left it, in the bottom of a crater in the middle of nowhere. The door opened when he approached. “Hello, Prince Vegeta,” the voice of the computer greeted when he climbed inside. Inhuman. Fully artificial. Not at all like the corporeal voices that inhabited Capsule Corp. Personality filled nuisances.

Vegeta activated the pod’s homing beacon. A small, red light began to flash on the screen. He sat back in his chair and sighed.

“Alright, you ugly lizard. Here she is. Come and get her.”

#

Not long after he’d returned to his quarters, showered, and changed into the earthling’s clothes, there was a knock on his door.

“Vegeta?” It was the shrill woman. Of course it was. Who else could it be? There were no other beings capable of knocking in the entire residence. She was the only human in a sea of helper robots and artificial intelligence. “18 says you kicked her out of the room, so she has no way of telling you dinner is ready. So! I’m telling you. Dinner is ready! You want to come with me? I’ll show you where the kitchen is.”

He grabbed his armor off the floor and opened the door. “Here.” He thrust it into her arms without preamble.

She rocked back on her feet with an “oof!” and would’ve fallen on her ass if Vegeta hadn’t snatched her elbow and held her still.

“I know you’re not from around here, Vegeta, but give a girl a warning first, okay?” She smiled at him, her unusually blue eyes looking him over from top to bottom and back again.

He glanced down to see what she was seeing. His gray pants with a loose waist made it easy to keep his tail out, and the black shirt with white letter CCs over his heart fit like a glove. His missed his gloves, but he found none in the boxes the drones delivered. Perhaps humans didn’t wear them. His tail he’d wrapped around his waist to keep it out of the way. There was no point in hiding it anymore.

Bulma whistled. “You sure clean up nice. What’s this?” She looked at the bundle in her arms for the first time and squealed. “Oh my god, it’s your armor. Oh my god! _Oh my god_!”

“I told you,” Vegeta said, releasing his hold on her and crossing his arms. “It’s unusable.”

“Are you kidding?! It’s perfect! Damn, Vegeta, I could kiss you!”

His eyes widened and his ears warmed. “Tch. Are you always this vulgar, woman?”

“18!” Bulma bellowed to the ceiling. “I need a drone, please. And yes, I am always this vulgar. Gonna go ahead and ignore the woman comment this time, but only because of this incredible gift you’ve given me.”

“I’ve given you nothing,” Vegeta said. “You are allowed to study my armor, but it is _my_ armor, and I expect to have it returned to me.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry so much.”

A drone similar to the ones that delivered his new clothes flew into the hallway and hovered in front of them. Bulma carefully handed the bundle of destroyed armor over to it. “Take it to my lab, okay?” She said to the drone. To Vegeta, she said, “The kitchen’s close by. Come on. My mother will kill me if she finds out I didn’t feed you properly.”

They walked in side step down the hallway. No lights lit their way. Bulma bumped her shoulder into his arm and he glared down at her, certain he’d have to save her from herself yet again. But instead, she was looking at him from under her thick lashes, a smile on her full lips. “Did it hurt?”

He blinked. When she bumped into him? He’d barely felt it. She was so weak! How stupid of her, to think she could hurt him in any way. What a stupid, shrill, vulgar woman. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your implant.” She tapped her right ear. “We saw inorganic matter in the scans, 17 and me, but we couldn’t figure out what it was. In through your ear canal and hooked to your Broca’s area?”

Vegeta nodded his head in acknowledgment, impressed she caught it at all. Not as stupid as he feared, then. It was a small implant, the only one he’d ever agreed to. “My scouter,” he said. “It’s the reason I can speak with you.”

“It translates?” Bulma’s eyebrows climbed high on her forehead. “What you hear or what you say?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Both. It makes it possible for me to communicate with anyone, no matter what language they speak.”

She clutched at her chest, a wild-eyed look on her face. “A real-life babel fish. That’s incredible! Could I see it sometime?”

Vegeta scowled. He had no idea what a babel fish was and no intention of asking for clarification. “It’s _attached_ to my _brain_ , woman.”

Bulma nodded, held up her hands in surrender. “Fair enough. Kitchen’s right here.”

It was the only door they’d come across that was already open and waiting, a gleaming white room filled with flat surfaces and places to sit and very few to hide. Vegeta stepped inside first and gave the space a cursory glance. Finding it to be free of threats, he stepped aside and let her enter.

She looked at him like he was back in the chair in the med-bay, under study.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, suddenly unsure what to do with his arms.

“Okay. So, this is the fridge.” Bulma grabbed the handle on a white, rectangular box. “Don’t know what your eating habits are like, but everything I’ve seen so far indicates you’re probably safe eating what I eat. I don’t cook, sorry to say. But my mom left a lot of food behind. Here.” She opened up the box, revealing several trays full of small capsules. “You look like a steak and potatoes kind of guy.”

Before he could ask her what she meant by that, she tossed a capsule at the table in the center of the room. It exploded. He covered his face with his arms, readied himself to jump and fight. Was her plan all along? Lower his guard and then blow him up? Silly human. As if he could be killed by something so pathetic.

The smoke cleared and he lowered his arms, ready to pounce. Instead, his jaw went slack.

It smelled delicious. Incredible. He closed his eyes and inhaled the new scents. Savory and smokey, it coated the back of his throat and made his stomach rumble.

Bulma giggled. “Help yourself, Vegeta! There’s plenty to go around.” She sat down at the table and indicated the seat across from her. “Come on, eat up.”

She filled a plate with food and put it in front of the empty chair before serving herself. Vegeta sat down and watched her as she picked up two silver utensils and cut into the brown meat that seemed to be the source of the incredible scents.

Bulma took a bite, her eyes rolling back in her head. “So good!” She moaned as she chewed. “Vegeta, it’s okay. Have some!”

He mimicked her hold on his own set of utensils, and copied her slicing movements, procuring himself his own piece of this so-called steak.

It tasted better than it smelled. And the texture of it! He sunk his teeth into it, and it melted in his mouth. He’d never had eaten anything so delectable.

“Don’t worry about being polite on my account,” Bulma laughed. “Eat! I can’t imagine how hungry you must be after traveling through space like that.”

Vegeta wanted to tell her that he was not being ‘polite on her account’. That he didn’t care what she thought and would not alter his behavior for her benefit in any way. He couldn’t say that, however, because he was too busy scarfing down as much of the incredible food as he could fit into his body. The potatoes! They were so — creamy? And fluffy? What was this magic?

Halfway through the meal, the food began to sit heavy in his stomach, but he ignored it and kept shoving more and more into his mouth. He was determined to enjoy it. He deserved to enjoy it.

And it wouldn’t be around for much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 😈  
> (Purple smirking devil emoji ftw)


	4. Chapter 4

If 17 asked, Bulma would lie and say she slept. She did try to sleep! She tried really really super duper hard! But there was AN ALIEN IN HER HOUSE and he gave her ARMOR FROM SPACE and for fuck’s sake, who could sleep when that was happening? 

Mostly, she’d laid there, tossing and turning with her eyes closed before finally giving up a few hours before sunrise and getting ready for the day. A day she spent in her lab, unaware of the passage of time or the rumbling in her stomach.

Vegeta’s armor was amazing. It was sort of like kevlar, except thinner and more effective. And the stretch of it! Incredible stuff. Bulma devoted a good chunk of 18’s processing power to recreate the material. The design of it was clunky though, with shoulder pads that should’ve stayed in the 80s. Bulma couldn’t get him an exact replica, but she could make him a sleeker alternative, and for that she was proud.

She was entering the last line of code for the 3d printer when her stomach rumbled. Bulma checked her watch, surprised it was almost dinner again. “18? Where is our house guest, anyway?”

“Oh, around,” she replied, sounding annoyed. “He’s been wandering the compound. In and out. In and out. He sat under a tree for a while. I guess monkeys love trees no matter what planet they come from.”

Bulma pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. “You’re not still mad at him for kicking you out of his room, are you? He wants privacy. All of this is new for him.”

“It’s new for all of us,” 18 said. “And I’m on his side. I got him this job.”

“It’s not a job, per se,” Bulma muttered. 

“I’m programmed to help people,” 18 said. “You made me this way.”

Bulma sent the design to the printer and stretched her arms above her head. “I have literally no control over your personality anymore and you know it. If I did, you’d stop talking about Anthony Bridgerton.”

“I will never stop talking about Anthony Bridgerton.”

Bulma rolled her eyes. “I’ll go to your brain, 18. I’ll do it.”

There was no response. Bulma grinned in victory, stretched, and scratched her way to standing. She’d track down Vegeta and feed him dinner again, tell him the progress she’d made with his armor. She would not mention that she’d already started brainstorming militaries to contact once she had it patented. 

“Bulma,” 18 said. “He’s here.”

“Who? Vegeta? Good. I was just thinking about him.”

“No, not Vegeta.”

She furrowed her brow and pulled out her phone. 18 started broadcasting the live security feed. There was Yamcha, her professional baseball playing ex-boyfriend, standing at the front door with a bouquet of blue hydrangeas in his hand.

Her mouth quivered. “He remembered my favorite flowers, 18.”

“Who cares?” 18 asked. “He’s a cheater, remember?”

She pushed her bangs off her face. “But…people change, right?”

“Bulma. Don’t make me play it.”

Bulma checked her cuticles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her phone began playing an older video, of Bulma herself spread out on her bed, surrounded by empty candy wrappers and ice cream cartons, sobbing and singing an off-key rendition of Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball to her empty room.

She flushed and put her phone away. “Fine. Consider me warned. I’m gonna go see what he wants because I’m not an asshole. But as friends, okay?”

“You promise?”

Bulma huffed. “I promise! Jeez!”

#

Vegeta hovered between sleep and wakefulness, his mind aware of his surroundings but also somewhere else, somewhere far away, on a planet that didn’t exist anymore. 

Three consecutive knocks pounded on his door, pulling him to wakefulness. He sat up on his bed and looked around the room, unsure of where he was. This was not his pod. This was not Frieza’s ship. This was that Earth woman’s home.

He scratched his chin, his scruff sticking him under the fingernails.

Another knock. 

“What?” Vegeta called out. “What do you want, woman?”

She didn’t answer, and the door didn’t open. With a loud grumble, he threw himself out of bed and tossed open the door. “What do you-?”

It was a drone. A drone was hovering out his door. It had flown itself into his door to mimic knocking.

Vegeta scowled at it.

“Hey,” said 18, “you’ve got work to do.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

The drone dropped something. Vegeta grabbed it out of the air before he had a chance to even think what it could be. He held up his hand to his face, finding himself now in possession of a device similar to the one the vulgar woman used on a regular basis. 

“Now you can call me if you want, and I call you if I need to without going in your room,” 18 said. 

Footage began to play of Bulma and a man sitting in the kitchen, talking. There was a bouquet on the table where they’d eaten steak the night before. The man was leaning forward, his hands on her shoulders, but Bulma was leaning back, her legs and arms crossed, her face turned away from him.

Vegeta waved the device. “What do you want from me?”

“You’re supposed to protect her, aren’t you?” 18 asked. “That’s why you’re here. You came from the stars to keep her safe.”

Vegeta stared down at his new shoes. Sneakers, Bulma had called them. They were white, scuffed up on the sides from his trips outside.

“She needs you now,” 18 said. “Are you gonna save her, or what?”

He ground down on his teeth, a growl forming in the back of his throat, and stomped off to the kitchen. 

“Thank you, Prince Vegeta,” 18 said.

His whole body burned at her words. If nothing else, maybe this threat would put up a fight. He needed to punch something. Vegeta flew to the kitchen, hoping to get this whole thing over with as fast as possible. The faster he could get to the fight, the better. 

Bulma’s screeching yell was audible even halfway to the kitchen.

“Let me get this straight! You want me to go to the game so I can sit in a seat the camera picks up often so that Launch can see that I am at the game, and she’ll get jealous?! The girl you cheated on me with? You want me to make her jealous?!”

“Bulma, baby,” the man said, “I think we’re having a misunderstanding here.”

“I have an IQ of 220! I MISUNDERSTAND NOTHING! Get out of my house!”

“Oh is that right?! You’re just so smart and so beautiful and you don’t have any time for me! Not now, not ever!”

“Time for you?! You cheated on me, you bastard! Get out! Get out! Get out!”

Vegeta landed on his tiptoes and strolled into the kitchen like he owned it. The man was clearly not expecting his sudden arrival, as his mouth fell open and anything he meant to shout died on his tongue.

“Oh, Vegeta! Thank God!” Bulma jumped to her feet and ran to his side. “Get him off my property, please!”

“Who is this chump?” The man climbed to his feet, deigned to tower above Vegeta like he was something to be feared. “Who the hell are you, shorty?”

Bulma shoved her way between the two of them. “Oh, don’t get all macho, Yamcha! This is Vegeta, my new head of security. Vegeta, this is my ex-boyfriend, Yamcha. Please escort him off the premises and while you’re at it, remember his face. He is not allowed back in Capsule Corp! Not now, not ever!” She stuck her tongue out at the scarred man and ducked behind Vegeta. “Don’t kill him,” she whispered before flaunting out of the room and out of sight.

Vegeta smirked. He wouldn’t kill the scarred man, no, but he’d add some more scars to that grimacing face.

“What are you smiling at?” Yamcha huffed. “She’ll forgive me and before you know it, I’ll be back sleeping in the master bedroom.”

“The master bedroom is her parents' bedroom,” 18 said. “Are you suggesting you regularly sleep with Dr. And Mrs. Briefs?”

His face went beet red. “N-no! That’s not what I meant! Damn it, 18! You’re always so mean to me.”

“Oh, did I hurt your feelings? I apologize. I’m not human, so I have trouble understanding the feelings of washed-up fighters.”

Yamcha pulled his hands into fists at his sides and stormed out of the kitchen, marching so hard his knees were practically hitting him in the chest. “Everywhere in this house! Disrespect! Stupid computer! Washed up fighter my ass!”

Vegeta followed him out to the foyer, entertained by the man’s rantings. A robotic butler stood by the front door, holding a coat in his hands. Yamcha snatched the jacket away and spun on his heel, shoving his finger in Vegeta’s face. “You don’t believe me? I bet I could kick your ass right now!”

Ah, exactly what he’d wanted to hear. 

Vegeta cracked his neck from side to side. “Go ahead then. Try.”

#

Bulma held out her arms while compressed air shot up from the floor of the White Room. Free of dust and debris, she slipped booties on over her shoes before entering the inner, temperature-controlled room. 18 was the most amazing thing Bulma ever created, and she took great care to keep her brain safe from any outside irritants. 

Control panels covered the walls of the room, so many that whatever paint had been on the walls before was impossible to see. They made up the different parts of 18’s brain, all of them connected to the center of the room. And in the center of the room, resting on a pedestal, was 18’s central core. The beating heart of the AI. 

Bulma’s legacy to the scientific community. At least, up until now.

“Hi,” Bulma said, sheepishly.

“Are you here to delete Anthony Bridgerton from my data banks?”

“No.” She sat criss-cross in front of the central core. “Just…hiding.” Bulma closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the cool metal of the pedestal. It was the closest thing to a hug she could get. Her parents were gone. Retired from the business, gave Bulma the keys, and took off to explore the world together. The friends she’d made during the ten years she and Yamcha were off and on again all turned out to be more Yamcha’s friends than hers. They’d cut her out of their lives after this last breakup, the one that stuck. Probably for the best, when she thought about it. Launch had been Bulma’s friend first before she started hooking up with Yamcha behind her back and everyone knew about it and no one said a damn thing.

Kind of awkward all around.

“You’re my best friend, 18,” Bulma said, tears pushing at her eyelids. “And I created you.”

“You’ll make new friends soon enough,” 18 said. “Perhaps not human friends. But a life form nonetheless.”

She sniffed. “If you’re talking about Vegeta, then you can shove it.”

“Why? I told you, he fits my perfect friend profile.”

Bulma sat back, wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Even he’s here to use me. I want someone who likes me for me.”

“What do you mean use you?”

“You heard him. I’m the last, best hope to save his people. He’s here because he wants me to help him, no other reason. Of course, if there is an evil space emperor and he’s a resistance fighter, I’ll eat a fucking hat.”

18 hmm-ed. “You don’t think he’s telling the truth?”

“Not a chance in hell.” Bulma leaned back on her hands. “No, what a load of bull shit that was. Like a plot straight from the Wachowskis. I’m not Neo, and he’s not Morpheus. I’m not Jupiter, and he’s not Caine.”

“What about the fact that his name is Vegeta and the name of his home planet is also Vegeta?”

Bulma snorted. “No, that detail is so stupid it has to be true.” She sighed. “I don’t know what he wants from me, and I don’t care. Because I’m using him too.”

“You did seem very excited to start studying him. And that waiver he signed was not at all in his favor.”

“No, it was not.” Bulma laughed. She closed her eyes and tilted her head up towards the ceiling, pretending the lights that illuminated the room were the sun, let it dry the tears on her lashes. “Just think of it, 18. I’m the scientist who has proven that aliens exist. I’ll go down in history books! And then all this extra stuff? Anything I invent because I’ve had a chance to study him? All that is bonus. Big, juicy, bonus.”

18 sighed. “At least you’ve stopped talking about the testicles of a dragon.”

Bulma jolted upright. “For the last time! They are _not testicles_! They are mystical orbs that can grant wishes!”

“If you say so.”

“That stupid scanner.” She hit herself in the face with her palm. “I was working and working and _nothing_ and then it caught the lab on fire!”

“I remember. I was there.”

She let her hand fall in her lap. “At least you did a good job getting the lab cleaned up when I was in med-bay with Vegeta. I still can’t believe it. An alien! And he’s here, in my house, let-”

“Beating up your ex.”

Bulma froze, mouth agape. She cleared her throat and pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“Check your phone.”

Bulma reached into her back pocket. Her screen was already playing the live feed from the foyer. Yamcha getting kicked in the gut was something she needed in gif format as soon as possible. But then Vegeta…Vegeta raised two fingers. And his two fingers _glowed_. 

“Um, 18?”

“Yes?”

“What is happening?”

“He’s glowing.”

“Yeah, I see that! How? Why?!” 

Vegeta flicked his glowing fingers against Yamcha’s forehead. Yamcha sailed out the front door, headfirst and upside down.

Bulma gasped. “Holy shit.”

Vegeta stopped glowing. He wiped his hands together, turned around, and flew out of the lobby.

He flew out of the lobby.

He FLEW out of the _lobby_!

“Holy shit he can fly! HE CAN FLY!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies to Lovey (Becky Chamber's Wayfarers Series) and Murderbot (Martha Wells' Murderbot). 
> 
> Thank you for reading! All comments, kudos, bookmarks, and subs are treasured even more than the testicles of a dragon. I'm sorry. That was a terrible joke. Not gonna delete it, though.


	5. Chapter 5

Vegeta had only touched down in the kitchen when the shrill woman came running in, screaming shrilly. She was blabbering on and on so fast and so high-pitched that he couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was saying.

He moved close to her, invaded her personal space, crooked his head low so his nose was inches from hers. “Get a hold of yourself, woman! Shut up!”

Bulma’s mouth snapped closed.  She inhaled through flared nostrils, and he watched with fascination as the expression on her face went from delight to confusion to fury. “For the last time!” She poked his chest with her cold finger. “It’s Dr. Briefs.” Poke. “Boss.” Poke. “Or Bulma! Not _woman_!” Poke poke.

He grabbed her wrist and held it between them, careful not to hurt her. Humans were so delicate. How easily the scarred man was defeated was proof of that. “Your lover is alive. I didn’t kill him. Now stop squawking at me and let me eat!”

Bulma stared at her wrist held in his hand. She blinked at it and then at him. “My lover? You mean Yamcha? I don’t care about him. I care about you!”

A smile broke out on her face, that expression of delight creeping back over her features, and Vegeta let go.

“Vegeta, you can fly! And you can glow? What was that? The glowing thing?” She held up two fingers. “I saw it on the cameras. You glowed in your index and middle fingers and then you _flicked_ him right out the door! It was amazing!”

He stepped away from her. “My energy.”

“Your energy?” Bulma repeated. “Like an aura? Are aura’s real? Can you do it again? In the lab? Oh, please, Vegeta! What do you use it for? What’s the purpose? Is it only for fighting? Can you make other things glow besides your fingers? W-"

Vegeta growled.

She clicked her tongue. “Too much talking. Right. Sorry.  Just excited. Can you do it again, though? In my lab?”

“If you promise to stop the incessant questions, _fine_.”

Bulma clapped her hands together and giggled. “Thank you, Vegeta! Come on, let’s go!” She skipped out of the kitchen. Vegeta cast one last, longing look at the fridge before following her out. The walk to her lab was far too long, but she didn’t ask any more questions. She wrung her hands before her stomach and hummed to herself, but didn’t talk to him again until they made it to her lab.

He hadn’t been in this room before. It smelled vaguely of smoke and lacked the medical chairs he’d found himself in the day before. There were computers and tables galore, and robots in various stages of completion.

“Sorry for the mess,” Bulma said.  “I had this idea for how to make androids and it didn’t work but it did lead to this cool containment field idea but then I got distracted by something else. Something that keeps catching fire, by the way.”

She moved the lifeless body of a half-completed robot off a chair, set it on a cluttered table behind them. “Here,” she said, pushing her bangs out of her face. “Have a seat. Or, do you need to stand to…do whatever it is with your energy?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, adjusted his foot stance to be shoulder length apart, and glared. “I’m fine where I am.”

Bulma’s smile faltered. “Okay. Moved that heavy-ass robot for no reason, I guess.” She picked up a flat, rectangular-shaped computer and held it up between them. “So, do that thing again, please.”

Vegeta grit his teeth, his gaze flicking to the ceiling. This woman would be the death of him. “You want to study my power,” he snipped.

“Um. Yes?” She peaked at him from around the rectangle. “I thought I made that clear?”

“Then call it what it is! My energy, my power! Not _that thing_!”

Bulma bristled, her fingers squeezing the device in her hands. “I’m so sorry I don’t know the proper words, oh, high and mighty Prince Vegeta! This is all new for me too, you know! Now be quiet and power up!”

He pinched his eyes closed, every limb in his body demanding he storm out and leave the shrill woman behind. But he needed her, damn it all the hell and back again. He needed her.

Vegeta raised his hand and focused. Within seconds, his energy lit up his two fingers, as she’d requested.

She gasped in delighted, and something loosened in his chest.

“Can you do more?” Bulma asked, her voice breathless.

He engulfed his whole arm in his power, but it fizzled out when it got to the elbow. Vegeta frowned. “I’m operating at a fraction of what my strength used to be.”

“Oh?” Bulma put the device down on the cluttered table. “Why’s that? You need food or something?”

“I could eat,” Vegeta said. “But that is not the reason my power alludes me. Frieza took it from me.”

“Frieza?” Bulma furrowed her brow. “Oh! The evil space emperor. Right. I keep forgetting about him. How did he take your power away?”

“He didn’t take it, he limited it. I do not know how.” Vegeta clenched his no longer glowing hand into a fist. “But I will get it back, this I promise you.”

She tilted her head to the side, her gaze sweeping over him. “How will you get it back?”

“Training, of course. I will push and push and _push_ until I get back to my full power. Nothing will stop me.”

Bulma flashed a smile that did not reach her eyes.  She grabbed her small device, that one that matched his, and slid her finger along the screen, illuminating it. “Okay,” she said, not looking at him. “Cool. Well, thank you for showing me what you can do! Go ahead and get something to eat, yeah? I’ve got work.”

Why was she always dismissing him? Leave the room this and leave the room that and don’t kill this idiot but show me your power.

He did go get something to eat, but because he was hungry and her mother’s food was incredible, not because she told him to. Besides, her lab smelled terrible and she was in it. Vulgar, shrill woman. Best to keep his distance from both irritants.

#

Something was beeping. Bulma squeezed her eyes closed tighter, chasing after the last bit of her dream. But the beep kept coming, and the dream got so far away she couldn’t remember what it was anymore. She opened her eyes and yawned. She’d fallen asleep at the table in the lab, her face in her arms and drool on her fingers.

Bulma sat up, rolled back her shoulders. Her neck ached. She wiped her fingers dry on the pants of her jumpsuit. Something kept beeping. Bulma yawned. “18? What time is it? What’s beeping?”

“It's after eight in the morning,” 18 replied, “and I have no idea what’s beeping.”

She knuckled her eyes. Whatever it was beeped again. A quiet little chirp. “Oh.” Bulma cracked her sore neck and looked around the table, searching for the device. “  I think  I know what — here it is!”

She snatched the scanner off the table, surprised and yet not when it was working. The scanner that wouldn’t scan was scanning! Finally. Not for what she created it for, of course. It was scanning for energy like Vegeta’s, and, according to its readout, had located three.

One was clearly  Vegeta. It was close by, fluctuating lightly.

“Show me what Vegeta is doing,” Bulma said. 18 put up the security feed. Vegeta was beating up a tree outside. Wonderful. Those trees hadn’t been planted _not_ to get used as punching bags.

There were two other energy signals her scanner was reading, only about ten clicks away.

“Now,” she said, “what are the odds of that? 18? Will you tell Vegeta to come here? I’ve got something to show him.”

She turned off the beeping and sent the data from her scanner over to the computer.

“He says no,” 18 said.

Bulma blinked up at the nearest light bulb. “Pardon?”

“That’s all the information I have. He said ‘no’ and then punched a tree once and it fell over. No one was there, but I heard it.”

Bulma pushed the heels of her palms against her eyeballs. “Tell him his armor is ready, okay? And have 17 send me some painkillers. I slept wrong and everything hurts.”

“From what I’ve researched, humans sleep better in a prone position on top of this device called a mattress.”

“When I create 19,” Bulma said, pressing harder against her eyes, “remind me to tone down the sass. And 18? Please order gym equipment for our alien visitor.”

“Logically speaking,” 18 said, and Bulma sighed out a “here we go again” under her breath. “If he can take down a tree with a single punch, what good would gym equipment be?”

“Fine,” Bulma said. “Add Invent Alien Appropriate Gym Equipment to do my to-do list, please.”

The lab doors opened with a whoosh, and a burst of air fluttered in around her.  Bulma dropped her hands and blinked, her vision blurry but able to make out the impossible hair of her house guest.

“Vegeta,” she grinned. “Good morning! How did you sleep?”

He crossed his arms. “The armor is ready?”

“The armor is ready,” Bulma repeated, forcing the smile to stay on her face. “I slept well, thank you for asking.” She walked over to the 3D printer and opened up the glass case that housed it. “I made some design changes, but the material is essentially the same. 18 and I did our best to synthesize it. Incredible stuff, you know.”

Vegeta grabbed the armor out of her arms before she even had a chance to offer it to him. She bit her tongue, her sore shoulders tensing so hard they covered her ears. This was all new for him, she told herself. He wasn’t used to Earth yet.  He was giving her her legacy on a silver platter just by existing right now, the least she could do was be gracious when he was cantankerous.

He dumped the armor on top of the nearest table, uncaring about all her half-invented creations underneath, and started sorting through it. “Looks different.”

“It _is_ different. That’s what I  just  said!” Bulma closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She needed acetaminophen and coffee. Yelling only made her ache more. “It’s sleeker. See, now, your shoulders have more range of motion. Makes it easier to fight. Try it on and see for yourself.” Bulma pulled out her most important creations from under his pile. Her little containment unit was something she was especially proud of.  The prototype she’d built before she got distracted by finding Dragon Balls was only big enough to contain something no bigger than a dog house, but once she built it to scale, it would revolutionize home security.

Vegeta huffed but did as she suggested, putting on his chest and backplate with reinforced shoulder straps instead of guards. The printer had fabricated a navy blue battle suit — with a hole for his tail! —, white gloves, and white boots as well, based on the ones that Vegeta had given her when he’d arrived. Those sat on a pile on her table while he admired the fit of his new armor.

“It’ll suffice,” he said.

Bulma rolled her eyes. She’d worked a miracle, but whatever. _It’ll suffice_ , her ass. “Yeah, you’re welcome,” she mumbled.

The lab doors opened and a butler bot walked in holding a plastic tray. There were two white pills, a cup of coffee, and a glass of water on top.

“Oh, thank you so much,” Bulma greeted. She swallowed the painkillers first before reaching for her coffee. “Vegeta, you want anything?”

He eyed the little butler bot up and down. It was a similar design to the flower robot he’d destroyed, four feet tall, white, and mostly featureless. Her poor flower robot. She needed to fix him.

“Water,” Vegeta said. And then, softer, so she almost didn’t hear it, “Thank you.”

She wasn’t sure if he was talking to the robot or her, but she decided it didn’t matter. An olive branch was an olive branch. She smiled at him, meaning it for the first time that morning, and picked up the scanner. “I didn’t call you for the armor only. I found something.”

He raised an eyebrow at the blue screen of her scanner, pulling the new gloves onto his hands. “Is this supposed to mean something to me?”

“See this?” She pointed at a glowing dot in the center of the display. “This is you. The scanner can find your energy!  But the interesting thing is that a few minutes ago, the scanner found two additional sources of energy. Here.”

She sat in front of the nearest monitor and pulled up the readout, opened a bar graph of the three energy sources. “See, this one is yours. And these two?” She pointed to the other two bars, each taller than the first. “These are only about ten clicks from here.”

He put his hand on the back of her chair, bending over her shoulder to get a closer look at the screen. His adam’s apple was an intense jut in the middle of his neck, and it moved when he asked, “These energies are like mine?”

“Not exactly,” Bulma said, her attention on his throat. There was a shadow of stubble along his skin. “They’re stronger.”

Vegeta whipped his face towards her, leveling her with a glare that made her shift in her seat.

“I mean,” Bulma coughed, “who  really  knows about, about these things?”

Vegeta stood up, his hand falling away from the chair. She exhaled in relief, but it got stuck in her nose when he picked her off the chair and tossed her over his shoulder.

She shrieked in surprise.

“You have the device?” He demanded, hiking her up higher on his shoulder.

She punched his back. The armor made her fists throb. “No! It’s on the table! Put me down!”

Vegeta grabbed it off the table and adjusted her again, this time cradling her in his arms like a groom crossing the threshold with his bride. He tossed the scanner on her chest and took off.

Literally took off. In the fucking air.

“What the fuck? Vegeta!” Bulma wrapped her arm around his shoulders and dug her fingers into his brand new armor.

Vegeta smirked at her. “This way is faster. You aren’t scared are you?”

The doors opened for them, guiding them out of Capsule Corp, and within seconds, they were in the air, soaring above the ground.

Their shadows crossed over large swatches of grass and hills. Her stomach rolled at the sight. She squealed and held him tighter. “N-no! No, of course, I’m not scared!”

“Good! Then make yourself useful and guide us to the energy source!”

Her fingers trembled as she held the scanner that finally worked, giving Vegeta a few course corrections. It was no time at all, and yet it felt like an eternity before he landed and set her down on the solid ground. She swayed where she stood, and would have fallen over if he hadn’t put a hand on the small of her back.

“Not bad for your first time,” he said, and it almost sounded like a compliment.

A kid —  maybe ten years old — came running up to them and Vegeta stopped touching her. The kid had dark hair that stuck up in all sorts of places, defying gravity as it did.

He also had a tail. It waved around behind him like it had a mind of its own. Bulma placed her hand on Vegeta’s bicep and leaned in close to whisper, “He’s got a tail like yours.”

Vegeta nodded once in acknowledgment.

“Hi!” The kid greeted. “I’m Gohan! Are you here for breakfast?”


	6. Chapter 6

“I could eat,” Vegeta said at the same time Bulma asked, “What’s for breakfast?”

There was a Capsule Corp house in the distance, used to extend the living space of a smaller, more traditional house behind it. A fire was going, smoke coming from the chimney, and even from the distance, there was a distinct scent of bacon in the air.

“Are you friends with my father?” Gohan asked. “Sometimes his friends come here to fight. I like to fight, but not as much as my father.”

A living, breathing, kid with a tail. Living ten clicks away from her home. The home she’d lived in all her life. And she didn’t find this kid until an alien barged into her house and destroyed her flower robot. What were the odds? Aliens, living on Earth, and she’d never have found one if an alien hadn’t stood in the middle of her office and told her she was in danger.

Bulma smiled at Gohan, bent down until they were eye to eye. “I like your tail,” she said.

“Thanks! I was born with it.”

“I bet. My friend here, his name is Vegeta. And he has a tail too.”

Gohan’s joyous smile lit up his face, revealed every single tooth in his head. “Show me!” He laughed. “Show me! Show me!”

Vegeta scowled off into the middle distance, his arms crossed tight over his chest. The happy smile from Gohan’s face faded, and he glanced at Bulma, confusion and hurt etching itself into his brow.

Vegeta unwrapped his tail from around his midsection and flicked it next to Bulma, the very end of it tickling her elbow.

Gohan yipped and jumped, getting a surprising amount of air as he did. “That’s amazing! I’ve never met anyone else with a tail! My father says he had one when he was little, but he doesn’t have it anymore.”

A pretty woman, a little younger than Bulma, stepped out of the house drying her hands in an apron. “Gohan? Who are you talking to?” She had dark hair and kind eyes and waved her dry hands in greeting. “Hi! I’m Chi Chi. Are you here for breakfast?”

Vegeta and Bulma exchanged a look. Okay, so it wasn’t only her that was surprised by the family’s friendliness. The woman did not have a tail, that Bulma could see from a distance. She stepped past Gohan and walked towards the house with her hand outstretched, waiting for the look of recognition to bloom on the woman’s face.

She was living in a Capsule Corp house, after all. She should know who Bulma Briefs was.

But the look of recognition never came.

She shook Bulma’s hand. “Are you friends of Goku’s? He’s out training with Krillin right now, but he’ll be back in a second. He can’t ignore bacon, no matter how much he likes to fight.”

“I’m Bulma Briefs,” Bulma said, at a loss. She was always recognized! Always! It was her curse! It was the thing she cried to 18 about all the damn time! She cleared her throat. “That’s my friend, Vegeta. We’re here, um, actually. So, you know how your son — is Gohan your son?”

“Yes, Gohan is my son.” Chi Chi’s kind eyes took on a threatening glint.

Bulma held up her empty palms in surrender. She hadn’t come to hurt anyone’s kid. “He has a tail, right? Well, so does Vegeta. So we’re…we’re seeing what’s up with that.”

“Oh!” Chi Chi giggled, the threatening glint disappearing, thank god. “Yes. That’s my Gohan! He was born like that, same as his father. Was your Vegeta born with it, too?”

Bulma opened her mouth to answer, but then snapped it closed. She had no idea. She’d make an educated guess that yes, he was. But she hadn’t thought to ask him if he was born with the tail or if it was added on later. He had an implant in his brain that made it possible for him to talk to her. Maybe the tail was something along those lines?

Bulma cupped her hands around her mouth like a bullhorn and yelled, “Hey, Vegeta!”

He was standing where she’d left him, busy ignoring Gohan. “What?”

“Were you born with it or what?”

He yelled back, “Born with what?”

“The tail!”

He uncrossed his arms so he could shake his fists at her. “Of course I was born with it! All Saiyans are born with tails!”

“Well s _oooorrrrry_! I didn’t know!” Bulma pushed her bangs out of her face and took a deep breath. “So,” she said, smiling at Chi Chi, “your husband will be home soon?”

#

The moment he saw the boy with the tail, Vegeta began accessing the Saiyan birth records through his scouter. It took a lot of focus to go through the download, and the woman screeching at him provided the opposite of focus. The boy was no better. He, too, was filled with questions.

It had to be a human trait. No wonder Earth had been so disconnected from the rest of the universe. The earthlings themselves were too annoying to deal with on a regular basis.

Vegeta accessed the file, the scouter reading it to him in his ear while displaying a picture on the inside of his eyes. An unsettling coincidence when a man who looked eerily like Radditz landed in front of him, his face and the picture of the child colliding.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta said.

“What?” The man chuckled nervously. “We don’t grow carrots here.”

Vegeta blinked, and the scouter closed the file. “No. That’s your name!”

“What? No, I’m Goku. Who are you? Are you here for breakfast? We don’t have carrots but it smells like Chi Chi is making bacon.”

“It’s your Saiyan name! You were sent here as a baby!” A spot by his right temple started to throb. He’d come to this planet for _one_ reason, and now the woman had found more Saiyans. It wasn’t possible. And yet, here he was, with irrefutable proof. One more Saiyan in the universe and he was a fucking idiot.

“Sent here as a baby? Well, my Grandpa did find me in the woods one day when I was real small.”

Gohan gazed up at Vegeta with a wrinkled nose. “What do you mean sent here?”

Bulma barged into the group, carrying a cup of coffee and chewing on a piece of meat that frankly smelled even better than the steak they’d eaten the other night. “I think I can explain that. See, Vegeta here, he’s an alien. From the planet Vegeta.”

“His name is Vegeta and his planet’s name is Vegeta?” Gohan asked. “That’s interesting.”

“I know, right?” said Bulma.

Vegeta grumbled under his breath.

“Anyway!” Bulma chirped. “I built a scanner that could find his energy because he’s got all this extra energy humans don’t have. And it found the two of you! So, there’s a chance you might also be from Vegeta’s planet. Which is, again, called Vegeta.”

Kakarot smiled at her. “Hi! I’m Goku! What’s your name?”

Bulma flashed Vegeta a look of confusion. “I’m Bulma.”

“Bulma,” Kakarot chuckled. “That’s a silly name.”

She glared at him, hands clenching into fists at her sides. “So is Goku!"

He shrugged. “If you say so. I’m gonna go inside and get breakfast. Gohan, buddy? You hungry?”

“Yes,” said the kid, “but Father? These…people are saying we’re aliens?”

“Well, you’d only be half-alien,” Bulma said. “Because your mom is human. Right? She looks human?”

“Oh, Chi Chi is definitely human.” Kakarot started walking towards the house, waving an arm over his head. “Come on, I’ll introduce you!”

Bulma sputtered where she stood next to Vegeta. “But, I already met her.”

“Are you sure this idiot had a higher power level than me?” Vegeta asked. “Because I am growing increasingly doubtful.”

She pushed up the sleeves of her Capsule Corp jumpsuit, clenched her hands into fists. “My scanner works! And it says both him and the kid are stronger than you. And _if_ he is a Saiyan-”

“He is.”

Bulma pressed her pink lips together, the tip of her tongue poking between them. Supple, she’d said about his. “How do you know?”

He tapped his ear. “My scouter has all the birth records of my people.”

She tilted her head, her unusually blue eyes searching his face. “I thought it translates?”

“It serves multiple purposes. I have stored in it all the remaining records from Planet Vegeta.”

“Why?”

Vegeta turned away from her, stared at the house and the family gathered outside, watching them. They’d gained an extra — a short, bald man wearing an orange outfit that matched Kakarot’s. “I would keep my people with me.”

She made a strange noise, soft and tender, and when he glanced at her from her corner of his eye she was gazing up at him with a level of pity that made him want to punch down every tree in the area.

He harrumphed and stormed towards the house. “Let’s go. Time to prove your scanner isn’t full of shit, woman.”

“It’s Dr. Briefs!” She shouted, running after him. “Or Boss, or Bulma!”

#

It was a good thing Bulma was the smartest girl in the world because she’d had to take in a lot of information over the last three days. Aliens exist, the prince of a destroyed planet wanted to take her to outer space so she could save his people, aliens were living ten clicks away from her house and impregnating humans and having half alien-human hybrids.

She sipped at her coffee and only partially listened as Vegeta and Goku were prattling on about something or other. Gohan was staring up at Vegeta with the wild-eyed look of a child meeting Mickey Mouse at Disney World for the first time. It would’ve been cute if the bald guy wasn’t looking at Bulma in much the same way.

“I feel like I know you from somewhere,” he said.

Here it came. The recognition. Always. And it was always about her father’s company and her father’s legacy and how she was his heiress. Never for her own work. Never for her own inventions. She was someone’s daughter, someone’s girlfriend, someone’s something. Never herself.

“We’ve never met before,” Bulma replied because that was technically the truth.

The bald man said, “I’m Krillin. I’m friends with Goku. Knew him back when he had his tail. He’s very strong, you know. Always thought there something…not quite human about him. But you can’t go around claiming everyone’s a little green man from outer space, you know?”

“Yes, I do know.” Bulma tossed back the rest of her coffee. “I’ve ended a lot of cocktail parties that way.”

“Um…what?”

Bulma set her empty mug down a bit too hard on the table. “Vegeta! Show them what you can do! You’re thing.”

He clenched his jaw. “We discussed this.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sorry. Your energy. Show them your power, oh mighty Saiyan prince.”

Vegeta scowled at the ceiling. The family that they had intruded upon stared at the two of them like the intruders that they were. It was rude, but also fair, so Bulma bit her tongue and didn’t yell at anyone else.

Vegeta held up his right hand, pointing his index and middle finger at the center of the table. They glowed. Her mouth went slack. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to that. The glowing engrossed his hand, his wrist, his perfect forearms. It went all the way up to his shoulder before it distinguished.

“Wow, that’s cool Vegeta!” Goku said. “Can you do this?”

He closed his eyes and literal wind began moving around the table. Wind! In the house! Bacon flew off her plate and slapped her in the shoulder. Bulma ripped it off her jumpsuit and threw it back down.

Chi Chi started screaming the word _outside_ over and over again. But then Goku opened his eyes and the wind stopped blowing. He was covered in energy similar to what Vegeta had produced. But it surrounded his entire body. His dark hair went blonde, and his dark eyes were blue.

Vegeta was speechless. “You,” he tried. And one more time, “You!”

“Gohan too!” Goku said.

And the kid nodded in agreement and copied his father’s movements. All of the sudden, two blondes were sitting at the table with them.

Chi Chi got on her knees and started cleaning food up off the floor. “Every time. Every time!”

“We call it going Super because Gohan here loves superheroes.” Goku rubbed the top of his kid’s blonde head affectionately. “You want to try it, Vegeta?”

“I do not need to try it! That is a form that I have already mastered! How is it possible _you_ can do it?! You’re a third-class Saiyan! And the child isn’t even full-blooded!”

“Well, I don’t know what all that means, but I couldn’t do it until after I died,” Goku said so nonchalantly that Bulma almost missed it.

“What now? What was that?” She looked at Krillin for clarification, who only shrugged.

“One time, I even went stronger than Super!” Goku said. “But just one time, I haven’t been able to do it again. Hey, maybe we can train together, Vegeta? Especially if you can do go Super, too! We can push each other and get even stronger!”

Vegeta stood up so quickly his chair fell to the floor with a bang. “Train together?! I’m convinced now. Woman, he is out of his mind! Clearly, the scanner _is_ full of shit.”

“Can we please circle back to the death thing?” Bulma asked, twirling her finger in the air.

Chi Chi picked up Vegeta’s fallen chair with a surprising amount of force for a human. “I don’t like talking about when he died,” she said, that threatening look in her eyes again that made Bulma gulp.

Goku’s power drained, his hair and eyes turning the right color. Gohan followed suit. Chi Chi stomped out of the room talking about a broom.

Everyone ignored Vegeta standing like a weirdo.

“I’ll tell you about it next time, Bulma,” Goku whispered.

Bulma leaned as close as she could to him across the table. “You promise?”

“Pinky promise!” Goku held out his pinky and she wrapped hers around his. Which, was a mistake. His light squeeze felt like he was trying to rip her knuckles clear apart.

“Ow!” She pulled her hand away, shaking it out. Her finger throbbed in pain. It was already turning pink and welling up.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry Bulma!” Goku rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “I was trying to be gentle, too. Man. I’m sorry. You okay?”

Bulma tried to assure him that she was fine, but Vegeta cut her off. “And now you’ve hurt the woman! Fantastic, Kakarot. Great job. We’re leaving! Now!”

Vegeta spun on the shoes she’d bought him and left the house in a dramatic march.

Bulma smiled sweetly at the three remaining men. “I’m sorry about him. He’s new to the planet, and things are — we’re still figuring things out. But hey! Come by my place sometime and I’ll make it up to you, okay? And we can talk, Goku. Right? Me and you? About the dying thing?”

He winked and gave her a thumbs up. “You betcha!”

Bulma left the table and headed towards where she’d seen Chi Chi go, determined to apologize to her too and thank her for the bacon and coffee. She got sidetracked, however, by an innocent little side table with a small, decorative ball on top. An orange ball, with four red stars.

Bulma was unaware that she was making noise until Goku came up behind her and said, “Gesundheit!”

“HAHA YES EXCUSE ME.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and activated 18. “PLEASE DO TELL ME ABOUT THIS DELIGHTFUL KNICK KNACK, MY NEW FRIEND.”

Goku blinked at her, and then matched the same loud tone of voice she’d used, “OH, THAT? THAT’S MY GRANDPA!”

“YOU DON’T SAY HOW INTERESTING!”

“I’M GLAD YOU THINK SO!”

18 indicated she’d run her scans. Bulma tucked her phone away and cleared her throat. “I’m glad I met you, Goku. We’ll get together again soon, okay?”

“Sounds great, Bulma! I’m glad I met you too! And tell Vegeta my offer stands. I’ll train with him anytime!”


	7. Chapter 7

Vegeta stood under a nearby tree, waiting. She was making him wait because of course, she was. Her idea of a power play, most like. She wouldn’t be so prone to not following his commands when he flew off and left her to walk her damn self home.

It was a decent distance back to Capsule Corp, and she was a weak human. Anything could happen on the journey. If she was hurt, his entire plan went up in smoke.

But he could make her walk while monitoring for threats without her knowing. That would show her. She wouldn’t know that she was never in any danger but would have to walk the entire 10 clicks on her own.

The woman in question made a high-pitched, whirring noise from inside the house. Vegeta tensed, strained his hearing, but the sound ended almost as soon as it began. She and the idiot Kakarot screamed at each other before she came running out of the house, her teal hair catching the wind behind her as she ran.

Vegeta adjusted his stance, expecting an overpowered, energy-filled moron to be running out after her. _His_ charge. The one thing in the entire universe he was supposed to protect.

She was laughing as she ran, and he relaxed his fighting stance. “Vegeta!” She threw her arms around his neck in a hug that would’ve knocked him off his feet if he’d been human. “Vegeta, you’ll never believe it! I made the most incredible discovery!”

He grabbed her hips, but only to remove her from his person, letting go of her the moment she was stable.

“Sorry,” she laughed. “You don’t like touching. I’m sorry. I’m just so happy!”

“What the hell could you have discovered in that moron’s house?”

“Dragon balls!” Bulma pulled out her phone, displayed a readout of incomprehensible scans. “Will you take me home, Vegeta? I’ve got work to do!”

He scooped her up, ready to put some distance between himself and the third class Saiyan who’d managed to surpass him in strength. He didn’t know what a dragon was, or why Kakarot would be in possession of its testicles, or why that would make Bulma delighted. Once they were in the air, she wrapped her arm around his shoulders and smiled up at him.

“I can’t thank you enough for destroying my flower robot,” she said. “Everything is so much better now because you’re here.”

He harrumphed and focused on flying them back to her home safely, ignored the feel of her in his arms, the way her body heat emanated even through his armor, how her hand was still cold on the back of his neck.

Such a fragile thing. If he dropped her, she wouldn’t survive the fall. Everything was better now because he was there? She had no idea what sort of man he was. How easy it would be for him to kill her. If she was half as smart as she thought she was, she’d be running away, screaming for help. Hiding behind that third-class Saiyan who called his ability _Super_. Not running to him and looking for an embrace and a ride.

Stupid, shrill woman.

He’d bet anything her tongue was brittle.

#

Bulma dashed off to her lab without a look back, leaving Vegeta alone in her strange home. Again. Not that he minded. He’d rather be alone. She was so full of questions and smiles that he missed the void of space and being suspended in stasis in his pod.

Vegeta made himself comfortable in the kitchen. The woman did not seem to require as much sustenance as he did, which meant he took most of his meals alone. He was quite familiar with the devices inside of it now and did need her help to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.

“Do you need assistance?” 18 asked.

Vegeta grunted. “No.”

“I see that you’re trying to turn the toaster on. Would you like me to turn the toaster on for you?”

Vegeta glared at the glistening, silver apparatus the AI was referencing. He’d set the bread slices inside it the way he’d witnessed the woman do during one of the few meals they’d broken together. But the bread continued to sit inside of it, cold and un-toasted.

He could do this without help. If humans could operate this machine, so could he. She’d prepared him this toast, slathered it in a fruity jam that he’d already located and opened. It sat on the counter next to the toaster, waiting for the browned bread to pop up. But they wouldn’t pop in.

18 sighed. The toaster made a noise, and the bread slid inside.

Vegeta’s eyebrow twitched. “I had it handled.”

“It’s no bother,” 18 said. “I want to help you. Especially after the way you took out Yamcha.”

Vegeta cracked his neck, remembering the fight. Not much of a fight. A pathetic display of a human outmatched and trying his best to impress a woman who no longer cared about him.

The bread popped out of the toaster, smelling delicious already, and it didn’t even have the fruity jam on it. He set it on his plate, grabbed a knife, and scooped out a heaving helping of jam.

“If all the fighters on your planet are as easily distracted by gorgeous girls as that weakling, it’s a wonder you’ve managed to survive this long without being conquered.”

18 made a sound similar to laughter. “Did you call Bulma gorgeous?”

“What?” Vegeta tossed his knife into the sink. It clanged against the metal, knocked against an empty glass that still had the woman’s lipstick on the rim. “No.”

“I’m pretty sure you called her gorgeous.”

Vegeta scowled at the toaster. The silver metal reflected the scowl at him, made his mouth smaller and his eyes larger. “I did no such thing.”

His own voice replied back to him, “If all the fighters on your planet are as easily distracted by gorgeous girls as that weakling, it’s a wonder you’ve managed to survive this long without being conquered.”

Vegeta took a bite of his toast. It didn’t taste as good as the one the woman prepared for him. “I didn’t mean that she is gorgeous,” he said. “I do not find human women attractive. I meant that he was thinking of her when he lost so soundly to me in a fight that was hardly worth my time.”

“Uh-huh.”

Vegeta snatched the plate off the counter. “I’m taking this to my room. Do not bother me!”

“I know the rules.” 18’s happy tone followed him as he flew out of the kitchen and towards his room. “Have a good day, Vegeta.”

#

Bulma danced around her lab, singing as she worked, adrenaline and caffeine and her goddamn genius compelling her not to stop. What a dumbass she had been! It was so simple a problem, too. The scanner was too passive. She needed something active. She needed radar!

And with Goku’s dragon ball for guidance, the Dragon Radar was up and running less than twenty-four hours later. A circular device no bigger than the palm of her hand, its green color screen could direct her to any of the seven Dragon Balls scattered across the Earth.

Bulma showered and changed into the outfit she’d picked out months ago for hunting Dragon Balls. It had hung in her closet while set back after set back kept her from donning it and running into the wild for an adventure that would change her life.

It had to change her life. That was the whole point.

“Aren’t you going to sleep first?” 18 asked. “17 is concerned by your recent lack of self-care.”

“I don’t need to take care of myself!” Bulma left her room barefoot. The boots she wanted to wear were still in the lab, in need of final tweaks. “What I need is to find all the Dragon Balls, and there’s no time to waste!”

“Should I inform Vegeta of your imminent departure?”

Bulma stopped walking long enough to put her hands on her hips and glare up at the ceiling. The floor was cold on her toes, a bit sticky. She’d need to send a cleaner-bot to mop up the place while she was gone. “Uh. No.”

“Hmm,” 18 said. “Your plan is to go without him, then.”

“Of course it is!” Bulma started walking again. “He can’t come with me! How am I supposed to use the Dragon Balls if he’s right there watching me?”

“I do not understand. Do the testicles require you to be alone when you touch them?”

Bulma, despite herself, laughed. “Shut up, 18. You’re such a sleaze. No, he can’t come because if he’s with me, he’ll hear my wish, and he’ll make fun of me.”

“Won’t he think it’s odd when you return from your adventure with the world’s most perfect boyfriend on your arm?”

Bulma tripped over her bare toes, choked on her tongue. “18!” She shrieked when she’d gotten hold of herself. “I told you that wish in private! DON’T SAY IT OUT LOUD SOMEONE MIGHT HEAR YOU!”

“The only one who doesn’t know about your ridiculous wish is Vegeta.”

Bulma stormed the rest of the way to her lab. “Does that mean you’ve told 17?”

“Of course. He’s my brother. We tell each other everything.”

The lab doors opened. Bulma continued storming, trying to locate her boots in the mess that was her lab. “I hate you, 18, I really really do.”

“You have told me repeatedly that I am your best friend.”

“Well.” Bulma found the orange boots underneath the broken chassis of her flower robot. “Ahah!” She sat down on the floor, pulled the right one on. “Well,” she said again, “I was lying. But that’s a good idea.”

“Lying is a good idea?”

“Not usually, but it is now. I’ll lie to Vegeta.” The left boot wasn’t as easy to pull on. Bulma stuck her leg up in the air and yanked with both hands for better leverage. It gave way, her toes easing inside. She wiggled them, admiring the fit. Hopefully, they worked. She hadn’t field-tested them yet. “He doesn’t have to know that if you gather all seven dragon balls together you can wish for anything you want. Let's pack and tell my bodyguard we’re leaving! This is gonna be great!”

Bulma climbed to her feet and swayed a bit. She looked down at her boots, but they weren’t activated.

“17 says no,” 18 said.

Bulma chuckled humorlessly. “I beg your pardon?”

“17 says no and that he’s initiating Protocol S.H.”

She sucked her lips between her teeth, biting down until it hurt enough for her to realize what she was doing. “What?! Tell him to knock it off! He has no right-”

17’s voice came from her phone tucked away in her pants pocket. “I have all the right,” he said. “I’m the sole initiator of Protocol S.H. Bulma, you haven’t had a decent night's sleep since the alien arrived. You are not going to leave this house until you’ve slept. I will not change my mind. It is for your own good.”

“I’ll sleep on the road!” Bulma shouted. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead! 17! _Don’t you dare_!”

But it was too late. The yellow alert light began to flash, and one by one, the clanging ring of all access doors being locked down thundered around the house. Bulma raised a finger in the air, furious and ready to give her inventions a piece of mind when Vegeta flew into the lab.

He was so _fast_!

“What is happening?!” He landed in front of her, gave her a quick once over before turning around and taking a fighting stance. “Stay behind me!” He ordered, his fists ready for an invisible enemy. “What is attacking? What is their approach?”

His frantic bodyguarding took the fury out of Bulma, the sting of indignity dissipating all at once. She lowered her waving finger and took a deep breath.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s 17-”

“I see. The computers have risen up against you.” His two fingers glowed. “Point me in the direction of their processors, and I’ll make quick work of the problem.”

“What? No. Well, kind of.” Bulma put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s Protocol Stay Home. It’s designed for when I’m being my own worse enemy. 17 is making sure I sleep before we leave tomorrow.”

Vegeta’s energy extinguished. He dropped his fighting stance and glared at her hand on his shoulder. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Bulma let her arm fall to her side and smiled. “We’re going on an adventure tomorrow! Won’t that be fun? See, this here?” She held up her newly invented radar. “It’s gonna help us find Dragon Balls, which are these seven orbs scattered across the world.”

He turned around, staring at her like _she_ was the alien. “And why would we gather them together?”

Her smile faltered. “We’d gather them together because they — they um. Can help! Turn 18 into an android! That’s why. Very advanced technology far surpassed what I’ve been able to accomplish. Right now her brain is just too big to fit into a robot. And robots are too stupid to be able to think and act like 18. So. Yes. The dragon balls are like a cheat code to get to androids.”

Vegeta crossed his arms over his chest. His right eye was slightly more narrow than his left, and Bulma had the distinct impression that he was as annoyed with her as she was with 17. “Wasn’t there one of these testicles at Kakarot’s house?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not you too.”

18 laughed.

“Why do we not take his ball?”

“They aren’t testicles, you guys. They’re mystical orbs, okay?” Bulma sighed. “And we’ll have to take his at some point after we find the other six. You see. You need all seven together to, um, reverse engineer their power. But, 17 is right. I haven’t slept properly since you got here. Let’s rest and we’ll leave in the morning.”

She toed off her boots and set them on the nearest empty chair, that way they’d be easy to find in the morning. Bulma pulled her yellow dress over her head, leaving her in nothing but her skin-tight sweater and matching pants. She draped it over the back of the chair so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. No sense in ruining the perfect outfit before she’d had a chance to adventure in it.

Bulma turned to Vegeta. Now his left eye was as narrowed as his right, but he didn’t seem annoyed anymore. Surprised, more like.

She rolled back her shoulders and took in a deep breath, pushing out her chest, because he deserved to have a good look at her incredible breasts after the way he busted into the lab to save her from an unknown threat.

The tips of his ears and the tops of his cheeks went pink, and his narrowed eyes flicked to the wall behind her.

Bulma smiled. “Wanna watch a movie?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to the Ocean dub for the "gorgeous girl" bit.


	8. Chapter 8

Vegeta followed the woman out of the lab, pointedly not looking at her ass as he did so. Her outfit was ridiculously tight, leaving little to the imagination. Not that he was imagining what her upside-down heart-shaped ass looked like, of course. He was the Prince of All Saiyans and would never, ever be interested in such a weak female.

He wasn’t sure where she was leading him, or what a movie was, or how they’d watch it. The only reason he was participating in this event is that she’d offered to feed him something called popcorn and then launched into a detailed explanation of how buttery and salty and delicious it was, and he wasn’t about to turn down food from the woman. She’d yet to feed him something that wasn’t worth his time.

Bulma popped into her bedroom, leaving the door open and still talking, though she said nothing. Vegeta waited in the hallway for her, mad he had to wait, upset he didn’t know what he was waiting for, annoyed that she wouldn’t shut up. She appeared a few moments later, wearing shorts so tiny as to be indecent, exposing almost every inch of her creamy white legs. The top was worse. At first, it appeared to be an oversized pink garment, the word CAPSULE in black over her breasts, that hung off one shoulder but otherwise covered her up. Then she raised her hands to pull her teal hair up in a messy pile on the top of her head, and the shirt no longer covered her midsection, revealing her flat stomach, the curve of her hips, her small belly button.

“Do they have entertainment where you’re from, Vegeta?”

Vegeta looked directly into her blue eyes and absolutely nowhere else. Entertainment? Ah, so that’s what these movies were. He was right to not ask. It would’ve made him look foolish.

Not that he cared if the woman thought he was foolish. He’d like to see her go to a Frieza Outpost and navigate her way around half as well as he’d handled his time on Earth!

“Lower-class warriors would fight to the death, and others would watch and cheer for their favorite. Money changed hands after the results were revealed.”

Bulma froze with her hands in her hair, her belly button out for the entire universe to see. “Okay,” she said, shaking lose of whatever had kept her still. Her arms fell to her sides and with them the shirt went down, hiding her belly button. “Maybe an action movie, then. 18? Did you get the popcorn done?”

“Yes,” 18 replied. “It’s waiting for you in the entertainment area. I’ve also had drinks and candy delivered. A real date experience, at least as far as I can tell, from the media I have consumed. I believe it's called, 'Netflix and Chill'.”

Bulma stopped moving again, her breath hitching in her throat. Vegeta glanced up and down the hallway, unaware of any approaching threats. She coughed, smiled at him in a way that didn’t reach her eyes.

He didn’t like that smile as much as her other one. The one that made her blue eyes even bluer, that wrinkled her nose and the corners of her eyes. Not that he was paying attention to her different types of smiles. It was only that she was more attractive one way than the other.

Not that he was attracted to her, of course.

Weak human. Shrill and vulgar and much too soft. Did all human women have breasts so round as hers? Saiyan women were so strong, so muscled. There was no use for pert, round breasts that-

“Do you want to change?”

Vegeta’s gaze snapped to her face. “What?”

She nodded her chin at his door. “While we’re here, you want to change clothes?”

He looked down at his new bodysuit, new armor. His new gloves and his new boots. Things she had created, fabricated on her own, better than anything he’d owned since his planet died. A veritable witch.

“Why would I want to change clothes?”

She yawned, stretched her arms so high above her head not only was her belly button visible but the lines of her rib cage, the pink lace of her feminine undergarments. “You know.” She smacked her lips together, bounced up on her tiptoes. “To be comfortable.”

“I am a Saiyan, I do not need to be _comfortable_.”

Bulma giggled. “You’re funny, Vegeta.”

His ears burned. “Tch, what — whatever.”

She giggled again and started walking away, Vegeta following after her once more. A delicious scent was in the air, that buttery treat she had teased earlier, and that was the only reason he was trailing behind her like some dutiful pup. That, and her computers had taken them both as prisoners in her home, and she was his charge. _Prisoners_ was giving the annoying voices too much credit. He’d already looked at one of the locked doors. It would be nothing for him to pry them open. Little more than swatting a fly out of the air. However, he supposed he should keep an eye on her until he was certain the computers posed no real threat to her safety.

“18, let’s put on _300_. It’s a movie,” Bulma glanced at him over her shoulder as she walked, and he bit back a wince, certain she was going to walk herself right into a wall. “Kind of an old one, but lots of action. I think you’ll like it. Oh! Should I explain what a movie is?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “It’s not real. You know how I have security footage all over the place? Well, a movie is like that, but people record things that aren’t real. And then later, other people watch it. It's make-believe.”

“Do you place bets on the results of the movie?”

“No.”

“What purpose does it serve?”

“Entertainment.”

She led him into a new room, this one featuring a large, L-shaped couch covered in pillows, and a massive, flat-screen screwed into the wall across it. The screen was on, and broadcasting images.

“How trivial.”

In front of the couch was a circular table covered in snacks and drinks. His nose lead him to the popcorn and he grabbed one of the two giant bowls of the stuff.

“Sums up most things about human existence.” Bulma sat down. “Come sit, Vegeta. Make yourself at home. Do you need a blanket?”

He sneered at her as he sat as far away from her on the couch as possible. A blanket? What did she take him for, a toddler?

“Okay, I’ll take that as a no.” Bulma pulled a blanket out of a basket on the floor and covered up her long, unblemished legs. Her skin itself radiated a creamy white glow with no visible imperfections or scars. She’d lived a spoiled life, that much was obvious.

Vegeta’s limbs and back and chest were covered in scars. Battles won and lost. A history of success and failure, a map of his life.

Bulma grabbed a small, purple box off the table. She popped it open with her long fingernails and shook out small chocolate treats into her palm. Her tongue snuck out to scoop the chocolate in her mouth, her throat moving with her swallow. Was there a part of her that wasn’t delicate?

Disgustingly breakable, if you asked him.

He’d eaten both his bowl of popcorn and most of Bulma’s when the tone of the movie changed and a male and female began fucking. Vegeta glanced at Bulma from the corner of his eye, certain she’d done this on purpose.

“What a vulgar choice for entertainment,” he said with a huff.

“The violence is okay but not the sex?” Bulma leaned her head against the back of the couch, exposing the column of her delicate throat. “Typical. I can skip it if it makes you uncomfortable.”

The woman again and her notion of comfort! Damn this entertainment. Now she’d think he was some sort of cock-less imbecile. He had a cock. A working cock. He knew all about fucking. Perhaps he’d never used his cock in that manner before, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of it. He simply hadn’t been inclined to fuck someone before.

Or, currently. Ever.

He was uninterested in that level of vulnerability. Madness, to your lower your guard in such a way. The only type of person he’d even deem worthy enough to be fucked by him would have to be strong enough to be his equal. He’d yet to meet his equal, and if he did, they’d be just as likely to stab him in the back as in the front, whether his cock worked or not.

The sex ended, the movie returning to violence. Vegeta shifted in his seat, his battle suit no longer fitting as it had before. A bit tighter than it should be.

All the popcorn. Junk, worthless food. It was obviously not meant for his superior Saiyan system. He set the bowl down, crossed his arms over his chest, and focused on the movie.

Even as Bulma sunk lower and lower in her seat. Even as her legs stretched out farther and farther along the couch. Even as her toes touched his thigh and her deep, even breathing was audible under the rumble from the so-called entertainment on the screen.

This woman had no concept of self-preservation. Sleeping in his presence? How could she be so stupid? He was so much more powerful than her, why would she put herself in such a defenseless state?

The movie ended. It wasn’t the worst way he’d ever spent a few hours, of that he would admit. Vegeta stood and approached the screen.

“18,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “Turn off this room. I will be in mine. Do not follow me.”

“Yes, Vegeta,” 18 said as the screen went black and the lights went out. “I remember the rules.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to yarnforbrains for the netflix and chill bit.
> 
> And thank you for reading, commenting, leaving a kudos, subscribing or bookmarking! I appreciate it all 💙💙💙


	9. Chapter 9

Bulma walked outside in her incredible outfit, her boots strapped on and ready for field testing. She had a coordinating yellow bag strapped to her belt where she’d keep the Dragon Balls as they found them. The Dragon Radar was in her hand. And her litany of capsules was in a small, black drawstring bag strung over the shoulder of her erstwhile protector.

Said protector was frowning. This was not at all unusual. But he seemed to be frowning more than normal. And he looked…tired? She hadn’t seen him look tired before. True, she’d spent a lot of time in her lab since he’d arrived. But his incredible shoulders were slouched like even they were frowning.

Bulma put her hand on her hip and flashed him her biggest smile. “Come on, Vegeta! Try to enjoy this! It’s practically a vacation!”

“A vacation?” Vegeta repeated. He harrumphed, one eyebrow arching, and it was a thousand times better than a tired frown. He was weird, but not in a bad way. In a different one. Weird in a weird way. Bulma liked it that about him. “Following you around all four corners of this backwater planet as you search for mystical testicles? What the hell kind of vacation is that?”

“ _Ignoring that_ ,” Bulma sing-songed and released the capsule she held in her hand. Her trusty Air Boat popped to life.

Vegeta glared at it.

“See? You don’t even have to fly! You can nap! Come on, Vegeta. Loosen up! Learn to enjoy life. We’ve only got a year left, right, before we have to go on this mission of yours. Relax a little.”

His glare snapped to her face. “We do only have a year _if_ we’re lucky. We shouldn’t be wasting time on a _vacation_. We should be in your lab, developing devices that will help us win the war.”

“Devices like androids?” Bulma popped her hip. “Androids that can think for themselves and kick massive amounts of ass? Because that’s the whole point of this,” she waved her arm at the Air Boat to help sell her lie. “Come on, Vegeta. It’ll be fun! Besides,” Bulma pressed the tip of her index finger against his cheekbone, “you’re kinda cute when you drop the arrogant, tough guy act.”

Vegeta flinched away from her, his weird, handsome face twisted in a mix of confusion and horror. “What?! I’m not — kinda cu— _shut up_!”

She giggled, happier than she’d been in days and weeks and months. “Get in, you big, tough guy. I’m driving.”

#

The closest Dragon Ball that wasn’t Goku’s took about three hours of flying to find. And then Bulma sighed, because they were over the ocean, with no land in sight.

Vegeta looked at her from the corner of his eye, the unmistakable twitch of his smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. He hadn’t spoken a word to her the entire flight at her, content with sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and moping, as per usual. But now he was all talk.

“Going to jump?” He asked. “Sure hope you can swim.”

Bulma rolled her eyes and banked the Air Boat, heading back to land. “I can swim and you can fly. We’ll get this Dragon Ball in no time.”

It took another twenty minutes to find a spot to land. Five more to find the right capsule out of the cinched bag. She threw it and it popped open with a bang, revealing different wet suits, bathing suits, fins, snorkels, masks, and scuba tanks. “I packed you a wetsuit, too," she said, handing it to him. It was a black shortie, enough material to keep his core warm, but it didn’t go past the knees or the elbows.

He tossed it over his shoulder, toed some of the equipment on the sandy shore. It wasn’t surprising he didn’t know what a snorkel was. But it was a surprise how often he refused to ask questions. If he didn’t know what something was, oh well, it must not matter. Even if it did. Bulma was the opposite. She knew if she ever found herself on an alien planet, she’d inquire about every single thing she came across.

Bulma grabbed her bikini and a wetsuit, clutched them to her chest while she looked around. They were on a secluded beach with nothing to hide behind or change in, except for the airboat. And she couldn’t even stand up in that.

She rolled back her shoulders and decided to get on with it. They were grown-ups! They were going to be together a lot! Plus, they both had banging bodies, and hey, if things happened, they happened.

Bulma hadn’t been properly pounded since Yamcha.

And even then, that only tended to be decent ten percent of the time.

“Turn around, please.”

Vegeta huffed, said, “Why-” and then went silent.

She pulled her dress off first, folding it neatly and setting it on the ground. Her sweater came off next.

Vegeta turned around.

Bulma pressed her lips together to muffle the sound of her laugh. She took off her boots and wiggled out of her pants. Vegeta’s armor hit the ground behind her. She didn’t look. She _would not_ look. Every inch of her skin burned when she slid off her panties to replace them with bikini bottoms. It was an accident that when she was bent over, pulling them off her ankles she got a good look at Vegeta’s calves. His bulky, tanned calves, covered in dark hair. Fuck, was it possible they were nicer than his forearms? Could anything be?

His blue battle suit was on the sand, too, meaning he was as naked as she was.

She reeled, all of the sudden light-headed, and quickly pulled on her purple bikini bottoms, standing up straight and swaying on her feet. Her stomach fluttered and her heart raced, but Bulma reached for the clasp on the center of her back and undid her bra.

Vegeta made a noise of indignation.

“Doing okay over there?”

“What do you take me for, an idiot? I’m just — what the fuck is this material?”

She pulled her bra off, dangling it in her fingertips before dropping it on top of her other clothes. Maybe she should hide it? Under her dress? In case Vegeta saw it? It was a pretty boring bra, after all. Sensible. Not the kind of thing you’d want a hot guy to see the first time he got you naked. “It’s a wet suit. It’s not that much different from your battle suit, is it? I mean. Lycra is lycra.”

“It has no bend, no give! It’s nothing at all like my battle suit!”

Bulma shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it, and slid her bikini top on. “Well, my bad, I didn’t spend as much time on your suit as I did on your armor. The wetsuit should feel more flexible once we’re in the water, though.” She tied the straps around her neck and sighed with relief. “There, that’s better. You covered yet?”

He made a noise in the back of his throat that she took to mean yes. Bulma glanced at him once, only meaning to check his progress, but then her eyes betrayed her. Her attention focused on him completely, her entire mind going blank.

He’d gotten the wetsuit up over his hips only, leaving the rest of him completely exposed. She’d known he was ripped from the moment she met him. It was impossible to hide a body like that. But to see it without any barriers was fucking transcendent. The dips and lines of his muscles were otherworldly. Carved out of marble from a foreign planet, and actually, that probably wasn’t far off from the truth. Hot damn. How was it possible for a person to look that good? He had scars, too. Crisscrossing over his chest, splattered across his biceps. Deep, painful marks. The body of a warrior.

And he was here to protect her? What life was she living? Someone else’s, clearly. Daphne Bridgerton had nothing on her right now.

Vegeta raised an eyebrow, a smug sneer playing on his mouth. “See something you like?”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed her shortie from the pile. “You know you’re hot, Vegeta. You don’t gotta be a dick about it.”

He chuckled darkly. “Thinking about dicks are you?”

She rolled her eyes even harder. Two could play at that game. Bulma bent over, her ass to him, straight up in the air. Yeah, get a load of her best feature. She shook her hips from side to side. Here it is, tough guy, get a good look. His chuckle stopped and Bulma almost exploded from pride. She wiggled her shortie on over her ankles and kept wiggling, slowly stretching herself to standing. Wiggle wiggle wiggle. Stretch stretch stretch.

Vegeta was still staring at her when she zipped closed the shortie over her tits.

“Well?” It was her turn to taunt him with a smug grin. “You ready to swim?” She titled her head, still grinning at him, waiting for his thoughts to catch up to his expression.

It took a few more heartbeats, but then it hit him. He furrowed his brow and glared at her, but he couldn’t quite hide the way the tips of his ears went pink.

“I brought two scuba tanks,” Bulma said, pointing at the two yellow canisters. “You want me to show you how to use it first?”

“What for?”

“To breathe air underwater,” Bulma said. “I can only hold my breath for like, forty seconds tops.”

“Ha! Pathetic.” Vegeta crossed his arms. He still wasn’t wearing his wetsuit all the way. He still had the most incredible forearms she’d ever seen. The prick. “I require no such device, woman. Gather what you need and let’s get this over with.”

#

The tank on her back made it too difficult for him to hold her the way he had before when he’d flown her to Goku’s house, so now she suffered the indignity of being carried by her armpits while her flipper covered feet skimmed over ocean waves. It wasn’t too rough, thankfully, but the spray was colder than she was expecting, and by the time they reached the spot in the water the Dragon Radar indicated, her calves were freezing.

“Here we are!” Bulma called up.

Vegeta’s response was to drop her.

She hit the water with a splash and a scream, her mask still on the top of her head, saltwater stinging her eyes and her mouth as she kicked herself to the surface.

Vegeta laughed, warm and dry as he floated above her.

Bulma yanked her mask over her eyes and nose. “You know what?” She scooped her hand and splashed him with everything she had, instantly stopping his laughter. Water dripped off his hair like the fur of a soaked cat. “Catch me if you can!” Bulma stuck the regulator in her mouth and dove under.

The descent was always easier than the ascent — going up too fast breathing compressed air was a fantastic way to get the bends and spend some recovery time in a hyperbolic chamber. But going down, Bulma could appreciate the crystal clear water around her, the coral reef teeming with life, the giant shark swimming only a few meters away.

She stopped swimming.

That shark was more than giant. It was _fucking gigantic_. It looked like a great white, but it was longer and fatter than a school bus. A megalodon? Impossible. Megalodons went extinct millions of years ago. It swam in a lazy circle, over and over the same stretch of the reef. With a sinking heart, Bulma checked the Dragon Radar.

The Dragon Ball was in the center of the shark’s wide circle.

Her head was yanked back by her hair, something tickling up the sides of her neck. Bulma screamed, almost spitting the regulator out of her mouth. Vegeta’s smirking face came into view above her, the sun shining down in the water around them and casting him in a halo he didn’t deserve.

Bulma raised her middle finger at him.

He raised his back, fist still in her hair.

She shook her head from side to side like a mermaid until he let go of her, then righted herself. Vegeta swam down in front of her. Bulma pointed at the shark. The massive roadblock impeding her success.

Vegeta looked at the shark, looked at her, looked at the shark. He pointed up at the surface of the water.

Bulma shook her head. She hadn’t come this far to leave empty-handed, for one. And for two, she was already down here. She’d have to ascend slowly to fight off getting bent.

He shook his head, pointed harder up.

Bulma raised her fists and mimed boxing. She pointed at Vegeta and then the shark.

He shook his head again, made an X with his arms.

Bulma pointed her finger in his face. She shook it and pointed it at the shark. He was her bodyguard, for chrissakes. He needed to guard her body while she grabbed the Dragon Ball.

Vegeta flashed his teeth. At her. What the hell? Bulma tilted her head. Was he planning on biting her? Because, really, under the circumstances, she might not complain all too much if he did. She shrugged and swam around him. They hadn’t known each other long, but she was willing to bet with her life that if she was in danger — which she most certainly was about to be — he’d do the right thing and help out.

He grabbed her ankle and held on tight. Bulma twisted in his hold, tried to kick him with her flipper, but he grabbed that ankle too. Vegeta yanked her towards him, her legs spread out on either side of his waist, her center colliding with the hard planes of his stomach. Bulma arched an eyebrow. Okay. Easily the wettest place on the planet to dry hump, but Bulma was always up for a challenge. He let go of her ankles and she wrapped her legs around him, dug her fingers into his hair.

Vegeta stared up at her, his eyes so dark and his pupils so wide there was no way of telling where the iris ended. He pointed his finger at her, the tip of it pushing into her collar bone. Then he held up a flattened palm. Telling her to stay. She nodded once. He then pointed his thumb at himself before holding up his fists. She nodded, scratching her fingers against his scalp. How was his hair still standing upright even under the water?

Vegeta pointed at the shark.

Ah. So he wanted her to stay while he punched the shark. Exactly what she’d asked him to do a minute before, but now it was his idea. Wonderful.

She unwrapped her legs and floated away from him, gesturing with both arms at the megalodon as if to say, Here You Go Your Highness.

Once more he pointed at her before holding up his palm.

She nodded, rolled her eyes.

Bulma, unlike Vegeta, could follow orders. And she did wait! For about ten seconds. Once Vegeta engaged the megalodon in fisticuffs, she swam for the Dragon Ball as fast as her flippers could carry her. She followed the direction of the Dragon Radar. There was a small hole in the coral reef, no bigger than her head. Pitch black. The Dragon Radar indicated that was the spot. She was going to have to stick her hand into a dark hole in the ocean.

The shark swam past, Vegeta on its back, his fingers in its eyes, blood trailing behind them.

She grimaced and shoved her hand in. At first, she only felt sand and gravel and — oh god something slimy. She shoved her arm in farther, her elbow disappearing into the abyss.

The shark swam by again, this time in the other direction. Vegeta was no longer on its back. Instead, his leg was in-between the megalodon’s teeth like a wayward piece of salad. Vegeta shook his fist at her, scowling like she was at fault for his predicament.

Bulma sucked a deep breath of compressed air off the regulator, and shoved her arm the rest of the way in, her shoulder slamming into the coral. Her fingertips skimmed something sleek and round. She gasped so hard she almost spit out the regulator. Bulma spread her fingers as wide as she could and reached her arm as far as it could go, the reef digging into her shoulder, tearing her shortie.

She rolled it into her palm and snatched it, wrenching her arm out of the abyss. It was beautiful! A yellow-orange color, the same as a sunset, with two red stars etched on it. Not etched. A part of it. Inside of it.

Vegeta swam over to her in a cloud of blood. The shark was nowhere to be seen. Bulma looked him up and down, happy to find him in one piece. Even his leg barely had a scratch on it. She held up her prize, proud of herself. Vegeta grabbed her wrist so hard that she almost dropped it. He started kicking with all his might, bringing them both to the surface much too fast.

If he didn’t slow down, she’d be in desperate need of medical attention.

Bulma grabbed onto his forearm with her free hand and squeezed. Vegeta looked at her but didn’t stop swimming. She shook her head, held up the flat of her palm. She needed to stay. She needed to go slow.

He let go over her, put both hands on his own throat.

Oh, so Mr. Tough Guy needed air now, did he.

Bulma inhaled deeply before she pulled out her regulator and offered it to him.

Vegeta stared at it like it was gross. And, really, it was covered in her spit, and it’s not like they were hooking up — unfortunately — so didn’t blame him all too much. But he grabbed it from her hand and shoved it in his mouth, sucking in a deep breath.

She kicked her slippered feet and began her slow ascent to the surface, Vegeta staying equal with her. She held out her hand and he spit out the regulator, gave it back to her. Bulma smiled at him before sticking it back in her mouth. It took another twenty minutes before they reached the surface, the two of them passing the regulator back and forth casually. He needed it less than she did, but he still needed it.

Once they got to the surface, Vegeta launched himself in the air. He grabbed her under the armpits and started flying back to land.

“Not a complete waste of time,” Vegeta said. “You got your stupid testicle and I got to kick the ass of something that put up a better fight than your lover.”

“Ex-lover,” Bulma yelled out, clutching the Dragon Ball to her chest like a child. “And I’m happy you’re having fun because we’ve still got five more to find.”

She only hoped that the rest of them weren’t guarded by long extinct creatures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to that episode at the end of the Namek saga where Bulma calls him cute and he literally can't handle it. It's fun writing fanfiction because I can take things from canon and put them in my story and no one can sue me!
> 
> Dear God, please don't sue me.
> 
> Moving forward, I'll be updating on Mondays. Unfortunately, real-life commitments are being all annoying.


	10. Chapter 10

From the ocean to snow-covered mountains. And all in one day! Bulma would’ve been impressed with herself if she wasn’t so distracted by the scenery. Which was…confusing.

Vegeta pulled on the bottom of his stuffed coat, glared at the obstacle before them. “The fuck is this?”

Bulma tilted her head to the side, squinted her eyes as if looking at it that way would help her make sense of it somehow. “Snow tornado.”

“Snow tornado?” Vegeta repeated, now fussing with the sleeves of his coat. “You continue to give me ridiculous clothing.”

“The only ridiculous thing here is your face.” Bulma stared harder at the snow tornado. Besides it being weird that there even was a tornado made of snow — seriously, was that a thing that existed? She had two doctorates, but neither was in meteorology — it was stationary. It spun around like a tornado, but it stayed on the exact same spot on the ground. “Anyway, the Dragon Ball is inside of it so,” she waved her hand, “get to it.”

Vegeta glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Get to what?”

“You know. Fly on in. Grab the Dragon Ball. Fly on out. Then we can make camp because I’m _starving_!”

“If you want your ball so badly, woman, you fly on in and get to it.”

Bulma clenched her teeth. His face was so freaking smug and handsome, she didn’t know if she wanted to smack him or kiss him. She blew out a breath between pursed lips before forcing a smile. “It’s Dr. Briefs, Boss, or Bulma. Besides, I can’t fly in and get to it. I literally cannot fly. And you’re so much stronger than me, Vegeta. I bet you could get it in like, ten seconds! If I tried, I’d hurt myself.”

“You are useless, that is true,” Vegeta said. “Fine. Stay here. I’ll go get the dragon tes-”

“Don’t you _dare_ call it a testicle again!”

He chuckled and took off, into the heart of the snow tornado.

#

“So, that’s the long and short of it, Dad. Aliens exist, the Dragon Balls exist, and my new alien bodyguard is helping me look for them!” Bulma sunk lower into the bath, pink, rose-scented bubbles tickling under her chin.

“How wonderful, Bulma!” Her dad’s voice came from the speaker of her phone. “And you’re sure you can handle it on your own?”

She raised her leg out of the water to scrub it with her soapy loofa, goosebumps breaking out when the cold air caressed her skin. “Of course! We’ve already got two Dragon Balls today!”

“Do please keep them for a bit before you wish on them. I’d love to get a good look at all seven of them together.”

Bulma rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to wait to wish for her perfect boyfriend. She wanted him as soon as possible, in her bed, keeping her warm at night. “I’ll make a deal with you, Dad. I’ll tell you when I find them, and you and Mom come to me and can even watch me make my wish!”

“Excellent, Sweetheart. I better get going, your mother is ready for the jump.”

Bulma blinked at her phone. “The jump?”

“Yes. We are on the plane and I believe it’s our turn to dive now. Talk to you later!”

The phone disconnected. Bulma blinked again. Her parents, skydivers? And 18 thought magical orbs were far-fetched.

Bulma finished up her bath and got dressed in pajamas. They’d set up a capsule house not far from the snow tornado, making it impractical to wear anything super cute to bed since the house didn’t have central heating. Flannels it was, then. Oh well. They were cute enough. She left the top few buttons unbuttoned, and she wasn’t wearing a bra, you are welcome Prince Vegeta.

He kept sneaking glances at her chest, not that she blamed him. Who wouldn’t? She had fantastic tits and really, they should be appreciated by a hot guy more often than they were.

Which, up until he’d stormed into her home, had been not at all.

Her fault, 18 said, for locking herself up in Capsule Corp. But she had a business to run! She was in charge of Research and Development. That meant she had to do the fucking research and make some fucking developments. 18 was far too into her historical romances. Not only shows, she read the books. And since she was a computer, that meant she read all the books. All the historical romance novels ever. More than once.

Insane.

Her creation.

Two things could be true at the same time.

Bulma gave herself a once-over in the mirror: cute, perky, damp. He’d be nuts not to notice her.

“Vegeta,” she sing-songed when she left the bathroom. “Did you like the ham I-”

The entire table was empty of food. Only crumbs were left behind on the pates. Vegeta himself was leaning back in his chair, digging his pinky nail between his front teeth.

A noise came out of her like a squeaky dog toy. “There were three hams.”

“Yes,” Vegeta said.

“You didn’t leave me any!”

“No.” He stood up, stretching and scratching his swollen stomach. “My turn in the shower.”

Vegeta didn’t so much as look at her as he strolled past her to the bathroom, though he did let out a loud belch once he reached her general vicinity.

It smelled like ham. Like all the ham she didn’t get to eat.

The jerk! He hadn’t left her a single bite to eat! She clenched her jaw, her pulse pounding so loudly in her ears she barely heard the shower turn on. Bulma stormed to the fridge. Fine. There was more food. She’d have to prepare it since they’d run out of everything her mom had left behind. Saiyans never stopped eating. One big hungry black hole.

At least, her Saiyan was. Were other Saiyans the same?

Where was her phone? She needed to tell 18 to remind her to compare notes with Chi Chi. _Oooh_! Would Goku let her study him, too? Then she’d have lots of data sets to compare!

Bulma pulled open the fridge, expecting to find a bunch of ingredients she’d have to somehow put together to make into an edible meal for one. But what she found was a plate, already made, with several slices of ham included.

Bulma covered her heart with her hand, her insides going all gooey. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll unbutton one more button for him.”

#

She tore through the drawer under the bed. There was only a single bed in the Capsule House. It wasn’t a very big house. Only one room for the bed, the kitchen, and a place to sit in front of a fireplace. Plus the attached bathroom. But she’d packed up a second bed. Bulma knew she did.

She was pretty sure she did.

She, at the very least, told 18 to pack it.

Bulma grabbed her phone off the mattress. “18? Where’s the capsule with the extra bed?”

“Locating it now,” 18 said. “Please hold.”

She blew her bangs out of her face.

“I have located the capsule with the extra bed.”

“Wonderful!” Bulma clapped her hands. “Where is it?”

“Back at Capsule Corp.”

Bulma glared at her phone because 18 didn’t occupy the temporary house, and so glaring a lightbulb would be fruitless. “Did you do this on purpose?”

“Of course not,” 18 replied. “I would never attempt to pull a Just One Bed Trope on my creator and her handsome bodyguard.”

Bulma — obviously having spent too much time with the handsome bodyguard in question — growled. “You jerk, 18! I’ll unplug you the moment I get home, I swear it!”

“Mm-hmm.”

She tossed her phone onto the Just One Bed and stomped over to the fireplace. It was getting colder inside than she’d like, and her flannels, no matter how cute, could only do so much. Bulma pressed the red button. The red button was in charge of the fire. Press the red button, the fire started.

There was no fire.

She pressed the button again.

Nothing. No fire in the fireplace.

Bulma pressed it a dozen times in rapid succession. Nothing happened.

“18!” She screamed, running for her phone. “18, did you disable the fireplace?!”

18 said, “I do not know what you’re talking about. However, there are lots of extra blankets in the storage under the bed. Perhaps you two should share body heat to stay warm.”

“Son of a whore!” Bulma shouted.

Her phone displayed a 404 error code. She dropped it into the drawer with all the extra blankets, slammed the drawer closed. “Bitch. Stupid bitch. I’ll kill you, you dumbass!”

“Talking to yourself?” Vegeta’s voice caught her by surprise, so much so she jumped straight into the air and almost out of her skin.

She swallowed down her surprise and turned the fierce glare meant for her erstwhile AI assistant to her ‘handsome bodyguard’ and goddamnit. He was handsome! All shirtless and wet, his grey sweatpants hanging low on his defined hips, his tail wrapped around his belly button.

What were those things called? Those V lines that pointed down directly to a guy's dick?

He had those. Amazing ones.

“18 is going through a phase and I’m going to kill her. She didn’t pack the extra bed, and she disabled the fireplace.”

He glanced at both the bed and the fireplace before looking at her, one eyebrow arched high on his weird, handsome forehead. “Why?”

“So we have to sleep together. To stay warm. She thinks she’s being clever. I think she’s getting unplugged!”

Both eyebrows slammed down hard into a furrow it was a wonder they didn’t make a _bam_ noise. “What do you mean 'sleep together'?”

“Oh.” Her cheeks warmed. Bulma giggled, her fingers blocking her mouth. “Nothing vulgar, Vegeta. We share the bed. Stay on our own sides. Keep warm under the covers together so we don’t die from hypothermia.”

“The cold won’t kill me, woman.”

“Fine. So _I_ don’t die. And since you are my bodyguard, keeping me alive is high on your priority list, is it not?”

He crossed his arms and closed his eyes. “Fine,” he said between clenched teeth. “But there are ground rules.”

“Let me guess?” Bulma popped her hip. “No touching.”

He opened his eyes, glaring at her. “No touching.”

“What if my toes are cold?”

“Wear socks.”

“What if I’m asleep and roll into you on accident?”

“I will push you off the bed, and I will not apologize.”

Bulma held out her hand. “Deal.”

He stared at her hand for a long heartbeat before sighing with disappointment.

“Oh. Right. No touching. Sorry.” Bulma awkwardly pulled her hand back. “My bad. Okay. Let’s get into bed then, shall we?”

“You go in first, up next to the wall.”

Bulma tilted her head. “Why?”

He sighed again, still disappointed in her. “That way I’m closer to the door. If there are any threats, I don’t have to get around you to fight them.”

She nodded, bit her lip. “Makes sense. But if you wake up when I make my nightly trip to the toilet, don’t complain.”

“Or, you could go piss now and then you won’t have to wake me up in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t _have_ to go to the bathroom right now, Vegeta. I can’t just pee on command, you know!”

He pointed aggressively at the mattress. “ _Get in bed and go to sleep_!”

Bulma mocked him under her breath, but also him bossing her around like that shot a tingle through her tummy that she very much enjoyed. She crawled under the covers and scooted her butt against the far wall, as commanded.

She patted the empty spot on the mattress, smiling up at him in the most reassuring way she could manage.

Vegeta, with a pained look on his weird, handsome face, lowered himself into the same bed as her.

She huffed. “Big baby.”

Vegeta lay like a pharaoh, flat on his back, with his hands clasped over his heart. He closed his eyes. “You are.”

“Puh-lease,” Bulma yawned. “The only baby here is you.”

“Shut up.”

She hummed, snuggled deeper against her pillow. It _was_ cold. She rubbed her legs together like a cricket to create heat.

“What the hell are you doing, woman?”

Bulma didn’t bother opening her eyes when she replied, “Warming up. Duh. It’s cold!”

“It’s hardly cold. A bit chilly, maybe.”

“That’s because you’re an alien, Vegeta. I’m a weak human, remember?” She pulled the blanket up to her chin, wrinkled her nose. “My nose is freezing.”

“How is that my problem? You can live without a nose.”

Bulma gasped, her eyes popping open. “I can live, but at what cost? My beautiful face!”

He chuckled. “You’ll look like that idiot’s bald friend.”

“Krillin?” She laughed. “He wishes.”

Vegeta rolled back his shoulders against the mattress, sinking lower on his pillow. “Go to sleep, woman.”

She pouted even though he couldn’t see it. “I can’t when my nose is this cold. Can I please-”

“No.”

“But-"

“No.”

“My nose!”

Vegeta moved at an incredible speed. He propped himself up on his elbow, grabbed her nose between two fingers. “Does this help?”

She pouted harder. “Unfortunately, yes.”

The corners of his lips twitched upwards in the unmistakable beginnings of a smile. He laid back down, releasing her. “Just the nose,” he said. “And nothing else.”

Bulma giggled in delight. She scooted close enough to him to press the tip of her nose against his bicep. He was wonderfully, deliciously warm. “How do you do that? Get so warm?”

“I’m…it’s a small bit of energy. Just, just shut up and go to sleep.”

He was creating a heat source for her cold nose. Her insides that went gooey before melted now. Her new boyfriend _better_ be perfect, because he was going to have a lot to compete with if Vegeta kept this up.

Bulma closed her eyes, finally comfortable, and took in a deep breath. He smelled like her rose soap, with his own underlying masculine muskiness underneath. She could bottle that scent. Sell it. Make millions. It might very well be the best thing she’d ever smelled.

“You’re amazing, Vegeta. Absolutely amazing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could tell you that this was as fluffy as it's gonna get, but that would be a lie.
> 
> So much Fluff. Fluff 2: The Fluffing Bugaloo.


	11. Chapter 11

Vegeta woke up all at once, instantly alert. But it was only the woman, standing by the foot of the bed and tossing blanket after blanket on top of him.

“What? What is — what?” Vegeta’s voice was hoarse. “The hell?”

Bulma squeaked. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to wake you up. Had to go to the bathroom, and I was cold, so I’m putting on a couple of extra blankets.”

“A couple?” He did a quick count. “There’s twelve.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “As I said, a couple. Now, shh, go back to sleep.”

“Don’t shh me.”

Bulma crawled over his feet and back to her side of the bed, burrowing under the multitude of blankets. “Ah,” she sighed, “that’s better.”

Vegeta was drowning under the blankets. He kicked them off, glaring at them, at her, at the capsule house, at the snow tornado still spinning outside.

“Stop moving around,” Bulma said, “my nose is cold. I need your arm again.”

“You had your chance with my arm,” Vegeta said. “It’s too late now. Use your blankets.”

“But it’s not just my nose now! My ear is cold! Can you hold it?”

He sat up on his elbow to better glare down at her. “Are you joking? Is this a joke? Is this your attempt at humor? You want me to hold your ear for you? After you’ve piled a thousand blankets on top of us?! Use one of the blankets!”

“Fine,” she snapped and tugged the topmost blanket halfway over her head. “It’s not as soft as you.”

“I am _not_ soft!”

“Jeez, fine, _sor-ry_!” Bulma closed her eyes, a deep frown on her pretty face.

Her regular face. A deep frown on her regular, human face that was neither pretty nor ugly, but simply existed.

Vegeta laid back down in his previous posture, flat on his back, hands on his chest.

“Vegeta?” Bulma whispered.

“No.”

“Can I please put my nose back on your arm? Please? Pretty please? I’ll go right to sleep and I’ll never bother you ever again.”

“I highly doubt that,” Vegeta said, but he dropped his elbow to the mattress.

She scooted closer to him, the tip of her cold nose pressed against his skin. Vegeta focused on releasing a small bit of energy, like before. She’d gone out like a light after calling him amazing. Absolutely amazing. Not that he cared what she thought, or said. But it was a testament to her intelligence that she noticed his greatness.

He was amazing, it was true. Good for her small, weak, human brain that she was able to recognize it.

“Vegeta?” Bulma whispered.

He exhaled loudly. “And here I thought you were never going to bother me again.”

“Vegeta, could everyone on planet Vegeta use _energy_ like you do?”

He hummed in agreement. “Not to the same extent, of course. Some were stronger than others. My father, the king, was the strongest of all. I surpassed him long after he was dead. Mastered the form that idiot called _Super_.” Vegeta clenched his hand into fists. “But I haven’t been able to access my full strength since.”

Bulma’s toes pressed against his ankles. He opened his mouth to tell her off, but she said, “I wonder if that’s something I can help with? Maybe, if we get 17 in on it, we can figure out what’s blocking you.”

He closed his mouth and decided to let her touch him in more than one spot. It was only her toes, after all, and they _were_ cold. “Perhaps. I achieved it through training, and training is what I need again.”

“What kind of training?” Bulma yawned, her face moving against his bicep. He felt her cheek bulge against him, the corner of her mouth when she finished. “I have it on my list to build you something to exercise with, to spare my poor trees. Maybe you can give me some ideas of what you’d like, and I’d see what I could do?”

“I doubt you could help,” Vegeta groused. “Earth here, the entire planet. It’s too soft. Even your gravity is weak.”

Bulma’s fingers climbed up his wrist. “Planet Vegeta had higher gravity than Earth does?”

“Yes, easily ten times as high.”

Her fingers slid into his palm.

She was like a fucking octopus, ensnaring him in a myriad of different ways. Her fingers in his hand, her toes on his ankle, her nose on his arm.

“You know, I’ve dabbled with anti-gravity technology.” Bulma yawned again, her lips moving over his skin. “It might not be that hard to go the opposite route and increase it. I’ll give it a think once we get home.”

Home. She said it so casually. It was not his home, and it wouldn’t be hers for much longer.

But if she could help him train hard enough to reach Super Saiyan again? Maybe they’d stand a chance. And maybe her touching him wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

#

The next time Vegeta woke up, it was with an itch in his nose. He twitched it, inhaled.

Hair went straight into his nostrils.

His eyes were still closed. He needed to open them to assess the situation. Fuck.

He was so warm and comfortable, and something soft was in his arms. Double fuck.

Vegeta held his breath — not because he was nervous, but because he was being careful not to wake up the woman if he could help it, he didn’t need her screeching this early in the day — and opened his eyes. He’d wrapped himself around her in the night. Literally. Wedged his arm under her head, the other flung over her waist. Even his tail had betrayed him, wrapping around her thigh and pulling her rear flush against his groin.

His cock, at this early hour, was proving just how much it worked. Regardless of whether or not he wanted it to.

Triple fuck.

He’d never hear the end of this. If she woke up to him holding her like this, his half-hard and getting harder dick pressed against her perfect ass, she’d never, ever stop talking about it.

Her ass wasn’t perfect. He hadn’t noticed it. It felt pretty good currently, but that proved nothing.

He needed to extricate himself from the situation without waking her up. She was already far too familiar with him. Calling him cute. Touching his cheek. Calling him amazing and holding his hand. This would fill her head with even more hot air. She’d float away before Frieza ever came to Earth.

Slowly, carefully, holding his breath and not even blinking, Vegeta eased his arm out from under her head. That was the big one. If he could free himself there, the rest shouldn’t be an issue.

Except for the tail. The tail was wrapped around her thigh one and a half times. It had really wanted her ass against his dick. Stupid tail. He had half a mind to rip it off and be done with it for betraying him.

His arm came free. He hesitated, staring down at the woman. Her eyes stayed closed, her breathing even. The sunlight streamed in from the nearby window and illuminated her face, which was neither pretty nor ugly but just existed, and he watched it dance across the cupid’s bow of her upper lip.

Bulma hummed, a smile crossing the lips he was staring at. “All that for me?” She slid her hips from side to side, her ass rubbing against his cock.

Vegeta disentangled himself from her, standing up by the bed in the blink of an eye. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, woman! I have to piss.”

She giggled.

He stormed towards the bathroom, but his superior hearing picked up what she whispered to herself, “Still got it.”

He glared at her over his shoulder, tossing the bathroom door open so hard it crashed against the wall. “You can’t still have something you never had to begin with!”

She giggled again, wiggling her hips under the blankets.

He slammed the door closed and locked it for good measure.

He’d never hear the end of this. Damn it and damn her and damn his damn tail!

His cock was still hard.

Fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck.

#

Bulma hummed as she flew. Vegeta sat in the co-pilot’s seat, eyes closed and arms crossed, hoping to sleep through the entire trip and wake up wherever her device was taking them. But her damned humming wouldn’t stop, digging into his ear canal with sharp claws that kept him awake.

“Would you stop that?” He groused, cracking an eye open.

Bulma grinned at him. “Stop what?”

“Being annoying.”

Her grin faltered. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your off-key humming makes me want to rip my ears off my head and shove them down your throat.”

She gasped, hand over her heart. “Wow! WOW! Rude, Vegeta. Really rude. _Especially_ after the way you were groping me this morning.”

“Tch. I did no such thing.”

She danced in her seat, that grin quirking up her full, pink lips. “I remember,” she sang, “a tail!”

“Stop it.”

“A tail around my thigh!” She kept singing. “Holding me tight!”

“Stop.”

“ _All through the night_!”

“It was not!” Vegeta snapped both eyes open, turned to face her with the full force of his glare. “It was not all through the night. It was barely in the morning! It wasn’t about you! It would never be about you! You are the most annoying being I have ever come across in my _entire_ life, and if I had been conscious and aware of my actions, the mere thought of my tail touching you would have been so repulsive I’d have puked up all the ham I ate the night before! Now, shut up and fly, damn it!”

Bulma’s jaw went slack, her mouth so wide open it made a perfect O. Her nostrils flared, her right eyebrow twitched, and her surprised O turned into an angry scowl. “You could do worse!”

“I don’t see how!”

“I am beautiful!” She screamed, holding up one finger. “I am smart!” She held up a second finger. “Almost as smart as I am beautiful! Which is saying something! And I’m rich!” Three fingers were thrust under his face. He pushed them away, snarling.

“Your Earth money is worthless. You wouldn’t last a second in space. Where things _actually_ matter.”

“And yet, you need me! Don’t you? To fight your _evil space emperor_ Freezer!”

“Frieza!”

“Whatever!”

The Dragon Radar beeped. Bulma grabbed it off the seat between them, cursing under her breath. She pressed several buttons on the dashboard of the ship and it started to descend. She never stopped swearing. Really impressive, actually, a collection of phrases Vegeta had not heard put together in such a way before. She questioned the parentage of his grandparents, his affinity for animals, and his feelings towards his mother as the ship came to land in a field surrounded by rocky hills.

“You stay in the ship, you asshole!” Bulma threw open the door. “I’m going to get this Dragon Ball by myself because I do not need you! You’re the one who needs me, remember? You better remember it, or I’ll leave you and your _resistance fighters_ to fight for yourselves!”

The way she said resistance fighters was similar to the tone she used when she said Frieza’s name wrong. Like she didn't believe him. Like she was mocking him.

“I am the Prince of All Saiyans!” Vegeta shouted back, also moving to the door. Not to follow her, of course, but to better shake his fist at her. “How dare you mock me?!”

“How dare I mock you?” She spun around on her toes, standing in the patchy grass, both hands on her hips. “I mock you like this!” Bulma stopped yelling, but only to speak in an incredibly high-pitched and nasally voice, “‘I’m Vegeta and I’m the Prince of All Saiyans and I wear bad clothes and smell bad! Blah blah blah! You should be scared of me because I’m so powerful but all I can do is make my arm glow!’”

He clenched his teeth, growling low in his throat. “I — _tch_! I sound _nothing_ like that!”

“That’s exactly how you sound!” She stormed off towards the nearest hillside. “Stay here and eat all my food, you ungrateful jerk!”

“I will!” He shook his fist at her retreating back. “I will do that! I’ll eat all your food! I’ll eat whatever I want!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Vegeta stomped back inside the airship, ducking down as he went. The blasted space was too small to stand up in properly. Screw her and her stupid inventions. Shrill, vulgar woman and her mouthy AI’s who shut off heating and forgot beds. Screw his own damn tail!

He found the bag of capsules and dumped it on the ground, rifling for the box that housed the ones with food. He’d eat all the food. _All_ the fucking food. Then they’d have to go home and stop this stupid charade.

Her home. Not his home. It wouldn’t be her own for much longer.

How dare she talk about Frieza like the bastard didn’t exist!

She was out there, walking further and further away from him, still blabbering on and on. His superior Saiyan hearing picked it up, of course, but it was mostly self-indulgent nonsense, ire directed at him. At _him_! When he’d done nothing wrong! Absolutely nothing! And she had the nerve to mock him?!

He’d never forgive her for this.

For the…for the…

Vegeta blinked at the spilled capsules. What was it that started the fight?

Oh, right. He’d never forgive her.

For humming.

“Fuck,” Vegeta said. That had to be the stupidest reason for jeopardizing the mission possible. What the hell was wrong with him? No. It was her! She was the problem! And yes, he needed her, but she needed to work on not being so fucking annoying. If she’d just stopped humming when he’d asked, none of this would have happened in the first place and where was the capsule with the steak and potatoes?!

Bulma stopped talking to herself.

Vegeta strained his hearing. She was quite a good distance away, or had been when she’d still been muttering. Maybe she’d wandered out of his auditory range. It didn’t matter. Let her walk it off. Let her find the stupid testicle on her own. He’d like to see her fight a monster underwater or fly into a snow-tornado!

She was just a weak human. She needed him way more than he needed her. If he hadn't been there, she'd have failed in gathering the previous two Dragon Balls. Bulma’s strength was in her brain. She’d be better off in her lab than traipsing about this backwater planet.

Bulma screamed.

Vegeta froze.

Perhaps she’d resumed her tirade? Or she’d tripped over something, snapped her neck. Or a monster protecting the mystical orbs had attacked.

Or she was mocking him again.

Another scream, longer, louder, and covered in terror ripped through the air. Vegeta jumped into action, slamming his head against the roof of the airship.

Stupid ship. Stupid woman! If she was dead, he’d kill her!

And if she was dying, her opponent better watch out. No one messed with _his_ charge and survived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The number of chapters has increased. Sorry about that. I was estimating before. Well, I'm still estimating now. Could go up again, honestly! Who knows? See you Monday!
> 
> Unless you're from the future. In which case, you already know what the final chapter count is AND can go ahead and read them right now! You and Future Trunks. Getting things done. Good for you!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to VegetaPsycho and their incredible [Namek AU Artwork](https://pin.it/6uykhWt) which this chapter was largely inspired by.

Bulma clutched her leg, tears rolling down her face, ruining her makeup. Why had she even bothered? Her mascara: ruined. Her blush: ruined. Her ankle: ruined! This day could not get any worse!

Vegeta came flying into the clearing, sparks of lightning combusting around him.

Bulma blinked in surprise. Her vision was blurry from her tears, yes, but she didn’t think that would make her see things.

He landed in front of her and the sparks died away like the end of a sparkler. His scowl was fierce and directed at her, even as his body moved into a fighting stance. “What happened?” He demanded.

Bulma cried again. Loud, wailing sobs. “Go away!”

“No!” Vegeta growled. “You’re my charge, you idiot. You’re hurt! Now, tell me what hurt you so I can kill it!”

She hid her face behind one hand, the tears only coming harder since he’d shown up, and pointed behind him.

Vegeta spun around, lightning sparking in the air around him in a glorious fireworks display before it fizzled out in the blink of an eye.

He dropped his fighting stance.

Bulma ducked her chin to her chest, trying to curl into herself. The jerk just had to bust in all heroically and witness her utter humiliation.

Vegeta turned around to face her, one eyebrow arched high on his ridiculous forehead. “A frog?”

She picked up a handful of dirt and tossed it in his general direction. “A frog! Okay?! It jumped on _my face_! I couldn’t see and I freaked out and I started running and I - I - I tripped over a root!” She gasped for air, her sobs a vice around her throat. “And now my ankle hurts so bad!”

“Let me get this straight.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “A frog hit you in the face and then you tripped and hurt your ankle? Is that right?”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “That’s accurate, yes.”

“What a weakling. You couldn’t even handle being alone for five minutes! How pathetic. I guess you do need me after all, woman.”

She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. “Maybe that’s true. Okay? _Maybe_! But you need me, too!”

Vegeta looked away from her, his brow furrowed and his mouth set in a deep frown. “Tch.”

“It’s true! You do! Not right now. But in a year or so? You need me. That’s the whole reason you’re here! So, so maybe we should…we should try to be friends?”

His expression turned from disdain to disgust as he glared at her from the side of his eye. “Friends? Hmph! I am in no need of _friends_.”

“Fine. Fine!” The tears had stopped, but her ankle still hurt, and her make-up was still ruined, and the sting behind her eyes suggested they could start up again at any moment. “Partners then. Or business associates. You need me to help you take down this bad guy that may or may not exist-"

“HE EXISTS!”

“FINE! And I need you to help me collect the Dragon Balls. It’s a business arrangement. Okay? So let’s stop fighting and try to get along for as long as we’re stuck together.” Bulma held up her hand. No, Vegeta didn’t like touching but shaking on it seemed like a good idea, and also, her ankle really hurt! She wasn’t sure she could stand up by herself without the help.

He stared at her hand before sighing loudly and grabbing it, pulling her to her feet with hardly any effort on his part.

Her ankle throbbed in protest, sent a shooting pain up her leg. She cried out, lost her balance. Vegeta let go of her hand and caught her around the waist.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, “it hurts! I can’t stand.”

He huffed but didn’t let go. “Weak human.”

Bulma leaned against him to take all weight off her bad ankle. “For what it’s worth, Vegeta, I’m a good friend to have. You know?” She pressed her forehead against his shoulder and reached for her belt. “I’ve got 17 in my pouch. Let me get him set up. 18 can connect him to his chair through the wifi hotspot on my phone.”

“What is the computer going to do?” Vegeta asked. His gloved hands spread across the dip in her waist. She tried not to pay attention to how big they were on her body, how warm, how he didn’t hesitate to come to her rescue even after their fight, even though she was a damsel in the most pathetic distress imaginable.

She found 17’s capsule hidden under the two Dragon Balls they’d managed to procure and tossed it behind Vegeta. It exploded into a medical tent, a red cross emblazoned on the canvas.

“I need medical attention,” Bulma said, finally lifting her head off his shoulder. His face was so close to hers that the tip of her nose grazed his chin. He needed a shave. Though, she was kinda into the five o’clock shadow thing. Or she was just into him, clean-shaven or otherwise. “Being injured seems like a good reason to have my medical expert check me out.”

“It’s an ankle,” Vegeta replied, and while his tone was condescending as all get out, his voice was quiet. “Walk it off.”

“I literally can’t. That’s the entire problem.” She looked up at him from under her lashes. “Can you carry me to him, pretty please?”

He rolled his eyes, his harsh exhale moving her bangs. “Only to get this over with faster,” he mumbled, sweeping her into his arms.

She bit down on her smile. He did not need to know how much she enjoyed it when he carried her. Vegeta shouldered open the canvas flaps and carried her inside, setting her on the single chair from the lab she’d packed. It moved into a reclining position. The scan box hummed to life, as well as several robotic arms along the side of the chair.

“Please step back,” 17 ordered.

Vegeta glared at the chair, but moved away, standing in front of the lockers that housed extra first aid equipment.

“You’ve been crying,” 17 said.

Bulma nodded. “I hurt my ankle.”

“It made you cry that much?” The scan box moved completely down her body, focusing on her injury.

“Well. Vegeta and I got into a bit of a fight. And then there was this frog. Anyway, I’m okay now, but I'm having trouble putting weight on it.”

The metal robot arms removed her boot. Bulma winced, breathing hard between clenched teeth.

“Please leave the tent,” 17 said.

Bulma blinked at the robotic arms. She’d only just gotten her boot removed, she was in no position to get up and leave yet. But Vegeta huffed, turned his nose up.

“Shall I go frog hunting then?” He pulled open the canvas flap. “Like I want to be in here anyway. Pointless waste of time.” He stormed out, still muttering to himself, the flap folding closed.

Bulma frowned. “That wasn’t very nice, 17.”

“What was your fight about, Bulma?”

“What? Oh, with Vegeta?” She shrugged a shoulder. A metal arm carefully lifted her leg by the calve while the attachment holding the scan box rotated around her ankle. “We had to share a bed last night, thanks to your sister by the way, and he ended up being the big spoon. I think he’s embarrassed about it, so he’s a bit snappier than usual, and it hurt my feelings. I’m a really good little spoon! The best, actually. And he shouldn’t be embarrassed about it. It’s totally natural for two hot people to want to snuggle. I’m not sure what his experience level is with women, but I doubt it’s very high. Unless, he just doesn’t like me for whatever reason, but that can’t possibly be true! Who wouldn’t like me?”

The metal arms began wrapping an ace bandage around her wounded ankle. Another sunk a needle into her arm, injecting a medication that 17 must have decided she needed. She didn't question it.

“It’s not good for you to be alone with him away from us,” 17 said. “We are limited in our abilities to help you outside of the compound.”

“Help me?” Bulma chuckled. “Talk to 18 about that! She’s only been hindering me!”

“I have talked to her about it. She’s wrong, and I told her so. Come home, Bulma.”

“Is my injury that bad?”

“It’s a sprain,” 17 said. “Nothing’s broken. You’ll need crutches when you walk. Keep it elevated and iced when you’re not. But that isn’t my point. We can’t help you out here. You’re alone with him, and he made you cry.”

She smiled at the robotic arms as they gently laid her leg back down on the chair. Affection swelled inside of her, made her heart feel a bit like the Grinch’s, growing several sizes larger than it had been before. He was her creation, too, and while she spent more of her time with 18 because that was the nature of their programming, she didn’t care for him any less.

It was nice to know it was reciprocated.

“Lots of things make me cry, 17. These Dragon Balls are worth it. Besides, he’s all bark and no bite. I can handle Vegeta on my own.”

The scan box was put away in its spot above her head. The robotic arms disappeared inside the chair. For a moment, there was no sound in the tent but her breathing.

17 sighed, and a locker door opened. “Take the crutches then.”

#

Packing up 17’s tent back into a capsule was difficult while balancing on crutches, but she managed. Vegeta stood several feet away, leaning against a tree, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. He did not offer to help. Bulma didn’t bother asking. She tucked the capsule back into her pouch and readjusted her new crutches.

They were difficult to use on the uneven terrain of the hilly forest she found herself in. Hilly forest? What even was that? What part of the planet where they even on? Vegeta glared at her the entire time she walked towards him. When she finally got closer, she heard him growling.

Growling. Again. Super normal thing to do.

Did Goku growl? She’d needed to ask Chi Chi.

“Ridiculous,” Vegeta snapped. “This is going to take forever!”

She glared right back at him. “I am trying my best!”

“As usual, your best is not good enough.” He took two big strides and was in her personal space. Without another word, he ripped the crutches out from under her arms and tossed them into the trees.

Bulma gasped and before she had a chance to swear, he turned around. “Hop on.”

She blinked at the broad expanse of his back.

“Um. What?”

He growled again, scowling at her over his shoulder. “Hop. On.”

Oh. He was offering her a piggyback ride. Her face was hot when she grabbed onto his shoulders. Hopping was hard, due to having only one usable ankle, but Vegeta was quick. He grabbed her under her knees and hefted her up comfortably on his back.

“Do you have the device?”

She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her since she was on his back and all. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat, fished the Dragon Radar out of her dress pocket. “Yeah, here we go. Just a few clicks north of here.”

He started walking, and a certain part of her was pressed up against the small of his back, and _holy shit_. She was a grown-up. She could do this. She could accept a piggyback ride from her bodyguard and not make it super uncomfortable for him. She’d meant what she’d said to 17. He obviously didn’t have a lot of experience with women, and she didn’t want to traumatize him by going too fast and ruining her chances.

Chances? She blew her bangs out of her face. They moved, but the hair stayed in her eyes. Because it was his hair. His impossible hair. She moved her chin closer to his shoulder, her empty hand sliding down to his chest.

Once they gathered the Dragon Balls, she’d wish for her perfect boyfriend. Having a boyfriend – a perfect one! – would put a damper on her growing attraction to her bodyguard. Then they could work together as business associates, who were both very hot, yes, but who didn’t hook up. Because he didn’t want to. And once she had a perfect boyfriend, she wouldn’t want to cheat on him.

Problem solved. Take _that_ 17.

She was a (mostly) heterosexual, sex-positive woman who hadn’t gotten decently laid in a really, really, _really_ long time. And just because her bodyguard was all smoldering and jacked and grumpy didn’t mean she couldn’t control herself. He was uncomfortable with touching. She was all about consent. It was never going to happen between them, so there was no point in focusing on how warm he was between her thighs, how much she liked the way he smelled, how the scruff on his cheek tickled her chin.

No point at all.

Bulma checked the Dragon Radar, holding it out in front of both of them so he could look, too. “It’s close,” she said. “We’re practically on top of it.”

Vegeta nodded once, his hair in her face again.

She spit it out of her mouth.

“Looks like it’s under this…mountain,” he said, coming to a stop but not putting her down. His gloved hands gripped tighter under her knees. “This moving.”

The mountain, gray and brown and somehow not covered in any dirt or trees — even though all the other hills in the area had many — shook.

Vegeta took a step back. “Breathing.”

Bulma tightened her hold on Vegeta, her fingers trembling around his breastplate. The mountain rose on two legs. Impossibly tall, it uncurled its massive tail, raised its enormous head, and roared, its razor-sharp teeth shining in the sunlight.

“Mountain.”

Bulma screamed and held on to her bodyguard so tight it was a wonder they didn’t fuse as one. “A T-REX! IT’S A T-REX! VEGE _TA_! I’M TOO PRETTY TO DIE!”


End file.
